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Swine flu outbreak raises global fears
By Adam Thomson in Mexico City, Clive Cookson in London and Aline van Duyn in New York
Published: April 26 2009 19:21 | Last updated: April 26 2009 19:21
Governments and health authorities worldwide went on the alert over the weekend for a possible influenza pandemic as the death toll from a new strain of swine flu in Mexico reached 81.
Janet Napolitano, homeland security secretary, on Sunday declared a “public health emergency” in the US as about 20 people there were confirmed to have been infected, though none is seriously ill.
The World Health Organisation in Geneva declared “a public health emergency of international concern”.
Keiji Fukuda, WHO assistant director-general for health security, said its emergency committee would decide on Tuesday whether to raise the official pandemic threat level above “phase three”, where it has been for several years in response to the threat from H5N1 bird flu in Asia.
A pandemic would seriously harm the prospects of the world economy recovering from recession, with the travel and leisure sectors particularly vulnerable – as the 2003 Sars outbreak showed. Authorities in several Asian countries were on Sunday starting to screen travellers at airports and border crossings.
The Mexican authorities declared a state of alert in and around Mexico City, the sprawling capital, with about 20m inhabitants where the outbreak is centred. They cancelled all public events over the next few days, including ministerial speaking engagements, large-scale meetings, rock concerts in the city and even football matches. The Mexican Football Federation confirmed that Sunday’s two big games in Mexico City would be played before empty terraces.
“We have formally declared a state of sanitary alert,” said José Angel Córdova, Mexico’s health minister, in a press conference on Saturday.
Mr Córdova confirmed that 20 of 81 flu-related deaths reported so far had been caused by the new swine flu virus, which first appeared in Mexico on April 13. He said it was likely that the remaining 61 cases had also been caused by the virus. There have been 1,324 cases reported in Mexico since the outbreak.
Dr Fukuda warned that much more analysis of Mexican and other samples was required before specialists could say how dangerous the new strain of swine flu was to people.
On the face of it, there seems to be some contradiction between the severity of the Mexican cases and the relative mildness of those in the US. No one in the US has had severe lung disease, as many Mexicans have.
Michael Bloomberg, mayor of New York, on Sunday said eight suspected cases at a school in Queens, a district of the city, had been confirmed by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). However, he emphasised that their symptoms – and those of more than 100 other students apparently suffering from infection – were mild.
Meanwhile, Mexico City, one of the world’s largest metropolitan areas, was reduced to relative silence as people opted to stay at home rather than run the risk of being infected on the streets.
Cars whistled through normally congested streets, shopping centres were abandoned and many restaurants kept their doors firmly closed.
Soldiers and federal police have been handing out 2m surgical face masks all over the city and the local government has set up special centres at metro stations and other frequented spots.
In a worrying sign that the virus might be spreading beyond the metropolitan area, the state of San Luis Potosí, north of the capital, was included in the formal declaration of alert.
