WHO-Swine Flu Update
May 9, 2009
The World Health Organization has raised its global tally of swine flu cases to 3,440 confirmed infections and 48 confirmed deaths in its latest assessment of the epidemic.
The doubling of cases in the US was cited as a reason for the overall jump. The US had 1,639 confirmed cases and two deaths, while Mexico, where the virus originated, had 1,364 cases and 45 deaths. There has been one other confirmed swine flu death in Canada, which the WHO said had 242 confirmed cases.
On Saturday, Italy reported its first case of the influenza virus contracted by a person who had not traveled to Mexico or the United States. The 70-year-old patient is the grandfather of an 11-year-old boy who recently returned from Mexico and had been diagnosed with the virus.
Japan, which so far has avoided a swine flu outbreak, confirmed its first three cases. A Japanese teacher and two students returning from a school trip to Canada were quarantined, along with 49 other passengers on a flight from the US city of Detroit to Tokyo.
The infected individuals were intercepted at the airport, as was an Australian woman. The woman became Australia's first confirmed case after she presented herself to medical staff in Brisbane after flying in from the United States.
Australia has not raised its pandemic threat level, despite the confirmed case, confident that the woman was no longer infectious. Japanese Prime Minister Taro Aso also declined to describe the three confirmed Japanese cases as a domestic outbreak because they were intercepted at the airport.
Japan's leading expert on infectious diseases, however, has urged that better preparations be undertaken for just such an outbreak.
“It is not a matter of ‘if.' it (the virus) will come in,” said Nobuhiko Okabe, director of the Infectious Disease Surveillance Center. “It would be wise to switch the emphasis of our strategies by assuming that the virus will spread,” he said, adding that “it would be difficult to contain an outbreak in a city such as Tokyo.”