The number of new swine-flue cases is stabilizing in Mexico, the epicenter of the influenza outbreak, the country's top health official said Thursday. Health Secretary Jose Angel Cordova told a Mexico City news conference he hoped the trend will continue and that a vaccine would be available in six months. U.S. scientists are racing to develop the key vaccine ingredient—a strain of the virus engineered to trigger the immune system. But they warned Thursday it would take months before enough doses could be ready for testing in humans. Cordova's remarks followed similarly hopeful comments from the mayor of Mexico City, who said statistics indicated “we are entering a period of stabilization.” However, the World Health Organization's (WHO's) top flu official cautioned that case numbers often fluctuate, and said the WHO had yet to see concrete evidence that the H1N1 virus, believed to have killed 168 people in Mexico, was leveling off. “It's a mixed pattern out there,” Dr. Keiji Fukuda said. “What's happening in one part of the country is not necessarily what's happening in another part of the country.”
