A U.N. health official praised China's aggressive steps to contain swine flu, as Hong Kong and New Zealand announced new cases Friday and Taiwan said it was bracing for a possible spike in infections when cooler weather arrives in September, according to AP. Hans Troedsson, head of the World Health Organization's Beijing office, said China's efforts to contain the disease _ which was declared a new pandemic on Thursday _ marked a massive improvement over its slow response to the SARS outbreak in 2003. «There is a huge difference compared to the SARS time,» Troedsson told The Associated Press. «What China has improved quite substantially is in its reporting and measures taken. For example, China has been reporting the cases within the stipulated time to the WHO.» The communist nation's slow response to SARS, or severe acute respiratory syndrome, was widely blamed for causing that global outbreak. This time, the world's most populous country has quarantined travelers _ including New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin _ on the slightest suspicion of contact with an infected person, and it has increased surveillance for the virus with temperature checks on incoming passengers at airports. China has confirmed 126 cases of swine flu on the mainland. There have been no reports of deaths. Troedsson said the region's more developed countries, including Australia and Japan, have been the hardest hit so far, but the UN agency is concerned about how well the region's poorer countries will handle bigger outbreaks, which he said were inevitable. «It's not possible to prevent it, but you can prepare for and mitigate the impact of the larger-scale outbreak,» he said. «In that respect, I think China is quite well prepared.» After the formal designation of the swine flu outbreak as a global pandemic on Thursday, Chinese Health Ministry spokesman Mao Qun'an told a news conference that Beijing will boost prevention measures, particularly at its border points.
