The WHO was on high alert yesterday in the face of an outbreak of swine flu with alarming characteristics that has killed as many as 60 people in Mexico and also reached the US.
“The most worrying fact is that it appears to transmit from human to human,” a spokesman for the UN body, Thomas Abraham, said, adding that the swine flu virus had mutated into “a mix of genes that we have never seen before.”
Dave Daigle of the US Centers for Disease Control, which is working closely with the WHO, said a strain of bird flu, two of swine flu and one human strain had combined for the first time.
These features, along with the fact that unusually young and healthy adults have fallen victim — rather than the very old or very young — have given rise to fears of a serious epidemic, if not a pandemic.
Pigs are an ideal mixing vessel for flu viruses if simultaneously infected with more than one, which can combine within the animal to create a new, more virulent strain.
Pigs have already been factors in the appearance of two previously unknown strains that gave rise to pandemics in the last century, the WHO said.
Health authorities are also in a race against time as the illness is already fairly widespread.
In Mexico the main outbreak has hit the capital, Mexico City, with between 18 and 20 confirmed deaths because of the virus, but San Luis Potosi in the central part of the country, with three dead, and Mexicali on the US border, have also suffered cases of the disease.
The virus detected in 12 fatal Mexican cases is also genetically identical to that which affected eight people in California and Texas, though all of those recovered.
In addition, 75 students in New York showing flu-like symptoms have been undergoing tests, CNN reported.
Authorities in Mexico, where 40 more deaths are suspected to have resulted from the disease, and some 1,000 patients under observation, are already using the term epidemic, but the WHO has not yet gone so far.
WHO Director-General Margaret Chan (陳馮富珍), who is a specialist on pandemics, returned from the US early yesterday and was expected to speak at an emergency meeting at the agency's Geneva headquarters later in the day.
Chan called the “virtual meeting” that will link public health authorities and experts in various parts of the world “to seek their advice and guidance,” WHO spokesman Fadela Chaib said.
The experts would not necessarily issue firm recommendations after the meeting. Once more details are clear about the virus and its risks, the emergency panel could recommend a change in the WHO's pandemic alert level — currently at 3 on a scale of 1 to 6 — or recommend travel advisories to control the flu's spread.
A pandemic occurs when there is a new virus to which few people have resistance, the virus is easily transmissible and sustainable within a population, causes severe illness and is spread over a wide geographical area.
Mexico has ordered schools and colleges shut, theaters and museums have also closed in the capital and two football games will be played today without spectators to avoid mass gatherings. Mexico City authorities initially announced a mass vaccination campaign using regular human flu vaccines, but later said that the WHO had advised them that it was better to use antiviral medicines.
“Vaccination is the second step,” Abraham said.
“At the moment, it should be possible to produce a vaccine since this virus has been identified,” he said. “But it will take some time.”
Some Asian countries enforced checks yesterday on passengers and pork products from Mexico amid fears that its deadly outbreak of swine flu might spread to a continent that has battled hard to contain bird flu.
Japan's biggest international airport stepped up health surveillance, while the Philippines said it may quarantine passengers with fevers who have been to Mexico. Health authorities in Thailand and Hong Kong said they were closely monitoring the situation.
CROSS-STRAIT COLLABORATION: The new KMT chairwoman expressed interest in meeting the Chinese president from the start, but she’ll have to pay to get in Beijing allegedly agreed to let Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) around the Lunar New Year holiday next year on three conditions, including that the KMT block Taiwan’s arms purchases, a source said yesterday. Cheng has expressed interest in meeting Xi since she won the KMT’s chairmanship election in October. A source, speaking on condition of anonymity, said a consensus on a meeting was allegedly reached after two KMT vice chairmen visited China’s Taiwan Affairs Office Director Song Tao (宋濤) in China last month. Beijing allegedly gave the KMT three conditions it had to
STAYING ALERT: China this week deployed its largest maritime show of force to date in the region, prompting concern in Taipei and Tokyo, which Beijing has brushed off Deterring conflict over Taiwan is a priority, the White House said in its National Security Strategy published yesterday, which also called on Japan and South Korea to increase their defense spending to help protect the first island chain. Taiwan is strategically positioned between Northeast and Southeast Asia, and provides direct access to the second island chain, with one-third of global shipping passing through the South China Sea, the report said. Given the implications for the US economy, along with Taiwan’s dominance in semiconductors, “deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority,” it said. However, the strategy also reiterated
‘BALANCE OF POWER’: Hegseth said that the US did not want to ‘strangle’ China, but to ensure that none of Washington’s allies would be vulnerable to military aggression Washington has no intention of changing the “status quo” in the Taiwan Strait, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said on Saturday, adding that one of the US military’s main priorities is to deter China “through strength, not through confrontation.” Speaking at the annual Reagan National Defense Forum in Simi Valley, California, Hegseth outlined the US Department of Defense’s priorities under US President Donald Trump. “First, defending the US homeland and our hemisphere. Second, deterring China through strength, not confrontation. Third, increased burden sharing for us, allies and partners. And fourth, supercharging the US defense industrial base,” he said. US-China relations under
The Chien Feng IV (勁蜂, Mighty Hornet) loitering munition is on track to enter flight tests next month in connection with potential adoption by Taiwanese and US armed forces, a government source said yesterday. The kamikaze drone, which boasts a range of 1,000km, debuted at the Taipei Aerospace and Defense Technology Exhibition in September, the official said on condition of anonymity. The Chungshan Institute of Science and Technology and US-based Kratos Defense jointly developed the platform by leveraging the engine and airframe of the latter’s MQM-178 Firejet target drone, they said. The uncrewed aerial vehicle is designed to utilize an artificial intelligence computer
RSS