Swine influenza has pandemic potential, WHO says (1st Lead)

Apr 25, 2009, 16:29 GMT

People cover their mouths in Mexico City, Mexico, 24 April 2009, due to a porcine flu sprout which has affected the Mexican Capital Federal District and the neighbor state of Mexico. EPA/Ricardo Castelan

Mexico City/Geneva - The World Health Organisation (WHO) in Geneva warned Saturday that the swine influenza in Mexico which has claimed at least 62 lives could spread to pandemic proportions.

WHO director-general Margaret Chan called the outbreak a 'serious situation' which was being watched closely.

The WHO, reviewing developments, may be having to raise the level of its alert warning later on in the day, depending on new data and reports from the region.

Currently the WHO has an alert status of 3 - denoting none, or very limited, human-to-human transmission - on its scale of 1 to 6. The alert status 4 indicates evidence of an increase in human-to- human infection.

Earlier Saturday, WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib confirmed a figure of 62 dead in Mexico while saying that the organisation's Strategic Health Operations Centre was now involved in the efforts in the region.

The WHO was in constant contact with health authorities in the United States, Mexico, and countries in the Latin American region in monitoring the situation, she said.

On Friday, Mexican authorities had confirmed the deaths of 20 people due to swine influenza over the past three weeks, while a further 48 deaths were suspected from the disease.

Amid other actions, Mexico City closed its schools and President Felipe Calderon cancelled a visit to the northern city of Ciudad Juarez.

Mexican Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova Villalobos said that the WHO was sending experts, technical support and medicine to Mexico, to assist the authorities in controlling what the minister defined as a 'controlled epidemic.'

However, he stressed that Mexico has enough medication to combat the virus.

'We have fully identified the type of virus, and we have anti- viral drugs,' he said.

Cordova Villalobos said the virus is transmitted from one human to another, and noted that there were 1,004 cases of infections across the country.

On Mexico's northern border, the US states of California and Texas have reported eight cases of swine flu since March, but no deaths as of yet, the US Centers for Disease Control said Friday. Villalobos said.