An escalating viral outbreak with pandemic potential continued its slow paralysis of Mexico's once-bustling capital city Tuesday as a growing number of swine flu cases in the U.S., Canada and elsewhere left the world bracing for the impact of a deepening global public-health crisis. Nowhere were matters more urgent than in Mexico City, where swimming pools and pool halls were closed, restaurants offered only tak
eout and officials contemplated severing the city's spinal column: a serpentine subway system that ranks as the seventh-busiest in the world.
But the sense of alarm was mounting elsewhere as well as the number of confirmed cases in the U.S., including at least five involving hospitalization, climbed to 66, up from 40 on Monday.
"I fully expect we will see deaths from this infection" as cases are investigated, said Richard Besser, acting director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
Canada confirmed seven more cases, bringing its total to 13 - four in Nova Scotia, four in Ontario, three in B.C. and two in Alberta. All 13 cases were described as mild, but that offered little comfort to officials all too familiar with influenza's notoriously unpredictable nature.
"Anybody who thinks they know what this virus is going to do weeks, months or years from now really doesn't have a clue what they're talking about," said Dr. Michael Osterholm, director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.In New York, where the bulk of the American cases are concentrated, several hundred students had fallen ill at a school already hit by the outbreak after a group of students went on a spring break trip to Mexico, city officials said. 'It is here and it is spreading," New York City Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden said of the virus. "We do not know whether it will continue to spread." Outside of North America, there were 17 other confirmed cases: two in Scotland, 14 in New Zealand, two in Spain and two in Israel. In Mexico, some 159 deaths have been attributed to the outbreak, which is confirmed or suspected in nearly 2,500 cases of illness.
But the toll appeared to be stabilizing, the health secretary said late Tuesday, with only seven more suspected deaths.
Jose Cordova called the death toll "more or less stable" even as hospitals are swamped with people who think they have swine flu. And he said only 1,311 suspected swine flu patients remain hospitalized, a sign that treatment works for people who get medical care quickly.
"You can see the total of new cases," Cordova said. "In the last days there has been a drop." So far, swine flu has not been blamed for any deaths outside Mexico, but officials have warned that's almost certain to change.
U.S. President Barack Obama asked Congress for $1.5 billion to fight the fast-spreading disease as federal officials suggested the flu may be spreading so fast, there may be no practical way to contain it. "Based on the pattern of illness we're seeing, we don't think this virus can be contained," Rear Admiral Anne Schuchat, the CDC interim science and public health deputy director, told a Senate health subcommittee. "We do think we can reduce the impact of its spread, and reduce its impact on health." Still, she warned, not only might the disease get worse, "it might get much worse." In Mexico City, widely viewed as the epicentre of the outbreak, officials moved to prevent people from getting together in large gatherings - public facilities like gyms, movie theatres, zoos and museums were ordered to shut their doors. Schools remained closed across the country.
Cruise line Carnival Corp. cancelled its Mexico stops for three ships that were scheduled to visit the country, while Cuba became the first country Tuesday to suspend outright all of its flights to and from Mexico as a precaution against the spread of the virus. Canada's largest travel company, Montreal-based Transat AT, said it is bringing its customers and employees in Mexico back to Canada and postponing any further flights to the country until at least June 1. Toronto-based Sunwing Vacations also put on hold all departures for Mexico until May 29, while rival Sunquest cancelled all of its tours to Mexico until June 4.
The World Health Organization, which on Monday ratcheted up its pandemic alert level from Phase 3 to Phase 4, was looking for evidence the viruses were spreading in sustained waves before moving to Phase 5, said the agency's top influenza expert, Dr. Keiji Fukuda.
The WHO and its panel of expert advisers want to see that swine flu viruses have actually taken root in countries other than Mexico and are continuing to transmit, said Fukuda, the WHO's acting assistant director-general for health security and environment.
"What we are looking for also are cases in outbreak which indicate that the infection is becoming established in a community or becoming established in a country," Fukuda said. World health officials in Geneva said they believed the virus appears to be establishing itself in communities and could well be able to produce larger outbreaks outside Mexico. "It's a very serious possibility, but it is still too early to say that this is inevitable," Fukuda said.
The global health body insisted that travel restrictions were ineffective, but Cuba's 48-hour suspension came as the EU's disease control agency as well as Canada, Israel and France warned against nonessential travel to Mexico.
"Border controls do not work. Travel restrictions do not work," WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl said, recalling the 2003 SARS epidemic that killed 774 people, mostly in Asia, and slowed the global economy. "There was much more economic disruption caused by these measures than there was public health benefit," he said, adding that WHO is advising countries to provide treatment for the sick and make sure national plans are in place to ease the effects of a larger outbreak.
Flu deaths are nothing new in the United States or elsewhere. The Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that about 36,000 people died of flu-related causes each year, on average, during the 1990s in the United States. But the new flu strain is a combination of pig, bird and human viruses that humans may have no natural immunity to.
With the virus spreading, the U.S. stepped up checks of people entering the country and warned Americans to avoid nonessential travel to Mexico.
"We anticipate that there will be confirmed cases in more states as we go through the coming days," Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said on NBC's "Today" show on Tuesday. A decision by WHO to put an alert at Phases 4 or 5 signals that the virus is becoming increasingly adept at spreading among humans. Phase 6 is for a full-blown pandemic, characterized by outbreaks in at least two regions of the world.
Symptoms include a fever of more than 100, coughing, joint aches, severe headache and, in some cases, vomiting and diarrhea. Many victims have been in their 30s and 40s - not the very old or young who typically succumb to the flu.
It could take four to six months before the first batch of vaccines are available, WHO said. Some antiflu drugs do work once someone is sick.
The best way to keep the disease from spreading, Besser said, is by taking everyday precautions such as frequent handwashing, covering up coughs and sneezes, and staying away from work or school if not feeling well.
Russia, Hong Kong and Taiwan said they would quarantine visitors showing symptoms of the virus. World stock markets fell Tuesday as investors worried that any swine flu pandemic could derail a global economic recovery. In the U.S., stocks fell moderately in early trading as investors worried that a growth in swine flu cases could hurt industries such as travel and tourism.
Source : http://www.lethbridgeherald.com/content/view/53454/29/
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