THE WORLD Health Organisation (WHO) raised its pandemic alert level over the swine flu virus to phase four last night. So far the outbreak has killed up to 149 people in Mexico and spread to the United States, Canada and Europe.
“This can be interpreted as a significant step towards pandemic influenza, but also it is a phase which says that we are not there yet,” acting WHO assistant director-General Keiji Fukuda told a conference last night.
Mr Fukuda said the virus was too widespread to make containment feasible and that closing borders and imposing travel restrictions would do no good at this point.
It would be prudent for people who are ill to delay international travel and for those who developed symptoms following international travel to seek medical attention, he added.
The results of tests for swine flu on four Irish people who recently returned from overseas are awaited.
Chairman of the national pandemic influenza expert group Prof Bill Hall confirmed at a press briefing at Government Buildings at tea-time yesterday that four samples were being tested for the deadly virus at the national virus reference laboratory in Dublin.
He added that tests on an earlier sample sent to the laboratory at the weekend had proved negative. The laboratory can make a diagnosis, he said, within five hours.
Details of the possible or suspect Irish cases came to light as Scotland confirmed it had two cases of swine flu and just hours after a case was confirmed in Spain. These were the first cases in Europe.
A global health alert was issued by the WHO on Friday in relation to H1N1 human swine influenza after it became clear the strain had killed significant numbers of people in Mexico. It said the strain, which is a mixture of pig, avian and human virus, had the potential to cause a flu pandemic.
The WHO uses a series of six phases of pandemic alert as a system for informing the world of the seriousness of the threat it faces.
Airline stocks tumbled worldwide yesterday as concern grew that the outbreak will dampen travel demand. In Mexico, surveillance began picking up cases of influenza-like illness in mid-March and there have been more than 1,600 possible cases identified. Of these, according to the government of Mexico, 149 have died. Schools there were yesterday ordered to close until May 6th to try and contain the outbreak.
Some 40 cases have also been confirmed in the US, with 28 of them in New York. The rest are in California, Texas and Ohio. There have also been six cases in Canada.
While EU health commissioner Androulla Vassiliou advised yesterday that people should not travel to affected areas, Minister for Health Mary Harney said yesterday evening she was not advising anybody to restrict their travel.
The WHO has not advised people to restrict their travel either – and the organisation’s advice will be closely monitored and followed.
Ms Harney will attend a meeting of EU health ministers on the evolving situation in relation to swine flu on Thursday.
Prof Hall said a lot more would be learned about the swine flu virus in coming days and months, and he stressed it was still unclear if we were facing a pandemic.
He said it was not yet known how easily it spreads in the northern hemisphere and if some people were more susceptible to it than others. The virus itself could be changing, he said, becoming more or less virulent. It was currently treatable with antiviral drugs but this may change too.
Dr Tony Holohan, chief medical officer at the Department of Health, said the State has had a pandemic plan in place since 2007 and it was recently updated. He also stressed that antivirals to treat up to 47 per cent of the population had been stockpiled.
Signs will be put in place at Irish airports in coming days in relation to the threat, and people travelling to affected regions should listen to the advice of local health authorities. Asked if there were likely to be cases of swine flu here, Dr Holohan said: “We can’t predict . . . but we are planning on the basis that we will see cases.”
Meanwhile, the Department of Foreign Affairs has said about 300 Irish people live in Mexico and about 1,000 Irish people are currently on holidays there. A spokesman emphasised, however, these were mainly in the Cancun area on the Caribbean coast which was not affected by swine flu. No Irish had been caught up in the outbreak in Mexico.