who expecting to move to designate outbreak as

Looks like it is becoming a widespread but generally mild illness.

Mexico stopped reporting suspected cases and deaths on April 30.


http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=email_en&sid=aARor8hP4yWk

only selected sections pasted

WHO Expecting to Move to Designate Flu Outbreak as Pandemic

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In little more than a week, world health authorities have tracked the emergence of the flu from an outbreak in Mexico and a few cases in Texas and California to more than 650 confirmed illness in 17 countries across the globe. The virus has shuttered school and offices in Mexico and the U.S., the next hardest hit country, stirred governments to use their treatment stockpiles, and spurred a quest for a vaccine before the beginning of the next flu season.

The virus is already at pandemic level, according to Ira Longini, a researcher at the University of Washington in Seattle who advises the U.S. government on flu.

“The definition of a pandemic is that the new virus has spread to several countries and is transmissible,” Longini said in an interview yesterday. “It’s hard to imagine it’s not going to continue to spread in some form.”


“Even though we might be seeing only mild cases now, we cannot say what will happen in the future,” Gregory Hartl, a spokesman for the WHO, told reporters on May 1. “If at the end of the day it remains a mild pandemic or if we can somehow avert the worst of the disease or stop the worst of the disease, then that’s fantastic. We will have done our job well.”

The Geneva-based WHO raised its six-tier pandemic alert to 5 on April 29. Stage 6 would signal a pandemic and alert governments to enact plans against the disease.

Canada became the first country to report a case of transmission of the virus from humans to pigs. A farm worker in the province of Alberta, who had recently traveled to Mexico, contracted the virus and probably is the source of the infection in the pig herd....


New York officials said they suspect more than 1,000 cases, so many that the government has stopped testing all but the sickest there.

Evidence suggests “transmission is widespread, and that less severe illness is common,” the Atlanta-based CDC said in a report May 1. In Mexico “a large number of undetected cases of illness might exist in persons seeking care in primary-care settings or not seeking care at all,” the CDC report said.