WHO warns of ‘imminent’ flu pandemic/Mexico shuts down to fight swine flu

WHO warns of ‘imminent’ flu pandemic
By Harvey Morris in New York, James Boxell in London, Frances Williams in Geneva and agency
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 29 2009 11:40 | Last updated: April 30 2009 16:05
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/95684290-349d-11de-940a-00144feabdc0.html


A man carries his coffee past empty tables at the ’Cafe La Habana’ after all restaurants were closed to inside dining in Mexico City. The city’s mayor said he would consider easing the citywide shutdown if the death toll kept tapering off

The World Health Organisation warned a global swine flu pandemic was imminent as it raised the global alert level on Wednesday to five out of six.

By Thursday morning, 236 cases had been confirmed worldwide, said Keiji Fukuda, the WHO’s assistant director general in charge of tackling the crisis. The disease has hit at least 13 countries, but Mexico remained the epicentre of the outbreak.

Margaret Chan, the WHO director-general, said anti-flu measures must now be undertaken with increased urgency. “All countries should immediately now activate their pandemic preparedness plans,” she told reporters in Geneva. “It really is all of humanity that is under threat in a pandemic.”

The phase five alert means that a pandemic is imminent and the disease can be spread from humans to humans in a sustainable manner.

The move came after the US reported the first death from the disease outside Mexico, where the new virus has killed up to 176 people though only a handful have been confirmed as stemming from infection.


Slideshow: World reaction to the growing outbreak

Switzerland became the most recent country to confirm a case, saying a man returning from Mexico had tested positive. A three-year-old child in the Netherlands was also infected, while closer to Mexico, Costa Rica and Peru also reported cases. The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed 109 cases in the US on Thursday.

Following the WHO’s Wednesday announcement, Felipe Calderon, the Mexican president, ordered government offices and private businesses not crucial to the economy to stop work for five days from Friday to avoid further infections.

”There is no safer place than your own home to avoid being infected with the flu virus,” Mr Calderon said in his first televised address since the crisis erupted last week.

Mexico’s peso currency weakened sharply early on Thursday in response, falling 1.6 percent to 13.83 per dollar, but world stocks, powered by gains in Asia on Thursday, struck a four-month peak after the outbreak initially weighed on markets.

Texas health officials said a 23-month-old child on a visit from Mexico had died from the disease in a Houston hospital.

Rick Perry, Texas governor, issued a disaster proclamation for the state which has 16 cases of the disease. He said closing the Mexican border was an option but would be premature.

Ms Chan said: “The world is better prepared for an influenza pandemic than at any time in history.”

Speaking shortly before Ms Chan’s announcement in Geneva, Janet Napolitano, US homeland security secretary, said: “We’ve been preparing all along as if this is going to be stage 6. We are preparing for the worst and hoping for the best.”

The WHO said the new flu strain appeared to be spreading from person to person, with its dissemination exacerbated by international travel.

France said it would seek European Union support for a continent-wide ban on flights to Mexico. The EU, US and Canada have already advised against non-essential travel to Mexico.

Mr Fukuda, the WHO’s assistant director-general, said earlier that analysis showed, “this was a new swine influenza virus behaving like a human virus”. He noted that most cases outside Mexico had so far been mild.

Before the Texas death, all deaths had been confined to Mexico, where 159 may have died from the disease, although only seven cases have been confirmed as resulting from the new flu strain.

US authorities extended the availability of anti-viral drugs and released 12m doses of the Tamiflu drug from federal stockpiles, as health officials reported the number of confirmed US cases had risen from 64 to 91 in New York and nine other states.

Egypt began a precautionary cull of the country’s 300,000 pigs, a move described by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation as “a real mistake”. Russia and China have banned US pork products, although Mr Fukuda repeated on Wednesday there was no evidence that people were being infected by exposure to pigs.

In Mexico, schools were also suspended until May 6 and the government assumed new powers to isolate infected people.

As companies worldwide stepped up precautions to protect employees, Patricia Espinosa, Mexican foreign minister, called at the United Nations Security Council for all countries to work together to respond to the crisis.

The southern African regional bloc is holding talks with WHO about increasing its stocks of drugs to treat swine flu, Barbara Hogan, South Africa’s health minister, said on Thursday, after the country reported the continent’s first two suspected cases of the virus.

”We have no confirmed cases of swine flu in the country yet [but] we have everything on high alert,” Ms Hogan told local radio.

additional reporting from Tom Burgis











Mexico shuts down to fight swine flu
By By Harvey Morris in New York, Stanley Pignal in Luxembourg and Frances Williams in Geneva
Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009
Published: April 30 2009 17:22 | Last updated: April 30 2009 18:40
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/b58601e2-35a2-11de-a997-00144feabdc0.html


Mexico on Thursday ordered the shutdown of all but essential public services to help combat the spread of swine flu, as a major US food producer denied speculation one of its pig farms in the country was the origin of the disease.

President Felipe Calderón said only essential businesses such as supermarkets, hospitals and pharmacies should stay open, and only critical government health and security workers would be on duty from Friday until Tuesday. A nationwide school closure was already in effect.

Officials in Mexico City said there was no evidence of an exponential growth in the number of flu victims after 176 deaths throughout the country that might be linked to the disease. Eight have so far been confirmed as linked to the new strain.

Worldwide, 236 cases have been confirmed, said Keiji Fukuda, the World Health Organisation’s assistant director general in charge of tackling the crisis. The disease has hit at least 13 countries, but Mexico remained the epicentre of the outbreak.

Smithfield denial

In the US, Smithfield Foods, a Virginia-based food producer, rejected claims in Mexico that a joint venture it runs in Vera Cruz was the source of the virus – officially designated on Thursday as Influenza-A (H1N1).

C. Larry Pope, Smithfield chief executive, said in a letter to employees that Mexican authorities had found no evidence of the virus at the Vera Cruz farm where the herd was routinely vaccinated. The results of further independent tests would be available and released by the company in a few days, he wrote.

The World Organisation for Animal Health said the virus was spreading person-to-person and there was no reason to cull pig herds. “There is no evidence of infection in pigs, nor of humans acquiring infection directly from pigs,” the Paris-based organisation said.

Egypt began had begun a precautionary cull of the country’s 300,000 pigs, a move described by the UN’s Food and Agriculture Organisation as “a real mistake”. Russia and China have banned US pork products.

In Washington, Olivier Blanchard, chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, said information so far indicated the flu outbreak was a relatively minor economic event. But the eventual economic impact on some countries could be “quite drastic”.

Travel limits

In Luxembourg, European Union health ministers reacted coolly to a French proposal to restrict travel to Mexico when they held an emergency meeting to coordinate the bloc’s response to the outbreak.

The meeting came after the World Health Organisation said on Wednesday night it was raising its global alert level to 5 on a 6-point scale, indicating a global pandemic was imminent.

A suggestion by the French health minister, Roselyne Bachelot, to ban outbound flights to Mexico was not seized upon by fellow EU members, many of whom said they doubted the effectiveness of such a measure.

Ms Bachelot’s calls echoed those made by the EU’s health commissioner, Androulla Vassiliou, earlier this week, to avoid Mexico, which were quickly downgraded to ”personal recommendations”.

More likely to gain support than a travel ban was a suggestion from Italy for some sort of joint strategy in stockpiling antivirals and vaccines for use across the EU.

The EU’s focus was on reassuring its citizens after a slew of new cases brought the total to over 20 infections in six countries including a new case each in Switzerland and the Netherlands.

In Spain, the worst affected EU state with 13 confirmed cases, Air Europa said it was cutting flights to Mexico by 80 percent.

All the European confirmed cases of the flu can be directly traced back to victims travelling to Mexico, except one case in Spain in which it is thought the member of a carrier’s household caught the disease.

Some passengers currently travelling in Mexico, are at odds as to whether to cut their trips short. Thirty Bulgarians, currently on vacation in Mexico, have approached authorities asking whether they should cut short their trip, said Anguel Kunchev from the country’s health ministry.

In the US, with the highest number of confirmed cases at 109, most of them mild, Joe Biden, vice-president, caused a stir in the travel industry by telling an interviewer he would advise his family to avoid air travel. His office later said he was merely restating government advice against non-essential travel to Mexico.

US officials, including President Barack Obama, have said they had no plans to close the border with Mexico and that such a measure was unlikely to prevent the spread of a virus that was already present in the US.

Global reaction

Governments and health organisations were making plans on Thursday to step up efforts to combat and contain the disease.

The southern African regional bloc is holding talks with WHO about increasing its stocks of drugs to treat swine flu, Barbara Hogan, South Africa’s health minister, said on Thursday, after the country reported the continent’s first two suspected cases of the virus.

”We have no confirmed cases of swine flu in the country yet [but] we have everything on high alert,” Ms Hogan told local radio.

The International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent societies, one of the world’s biggest humanitarian organisations, also made a Thursday appeal for an initial $4.4m from donors to fund its response to the swine flu outbreak, saying there was an ”imminent risk of a global pandemic”. It said more than 130 of its 186 national branches worldwide were already working to mitigate the virus’ impact.

In the US, Mr Obama had asked Congress for for $1.5bn to combat swine flu earlier in the week.

Bulgaria ordered swine flu tests from the US, according to officials. The country currently has no way of identifying the disease other than to send tests to a foreign lab, but has announced measures to quarantine anyone with a suspected case, using thermal scanners at the airport to identify passengers with elevated temperatures.

Additional reporting from Tom Burgis in Johannesburg and Theodor Troev in Bulgaria