Mexican authorities said earlier they believed the situation with the new flu outbreak was stabilizing as fewer patients with severe symptoms were checking into hospitals.
The WHO said yesterday its laboratories had confirmed a total of 658 H1N1 flu infections in 16 countries, including 16 deaths in Mexico.
Its toll lagged national reports about the virus but is considered more scientifically sound.
The US, the second-hardest-hit nation, has confirmed 160 cases in 21 states.
But public hospitals in Mexico have noted a steady drop in patients turning up with fevers, suggesting the infection rate may be declining as people use hand gel and avoid crowds.
US officials said they were encouraged by developments in Mexico but it was too early to relax.
Almost all infections outside Mexico have been mild. The only death in another country has been a Mexican toddler who was taken to the US before he became ill.
US President Barack Obama said the US was responding to the new flu strain, closing some schools temporarily and distributing antiviral drug supplies as needed.
Scientists are still trying to assess how the new virus behaves and compares to regular seasonal flu strains, which kill between 250,000 and 500,000 globally every year.
WHO hiked its alert level to 5 from 3 last week — the last step before a pandemic — because of the flu’s spread and the threat it could target poor and disease-prone communities.
In the UK, Health Secretary Alan Johnson said yesterday that the spread of the new flu strain had been contained in the UK, but there would be more confirmed cases.
Health officials had to be ready for a more serious wave of the new H1N1 virus later in the year, he warned.
“There will be more cases, there’s 15 confirmed at the moment. That will go up, there’s absolutely no doubt about that, but at the moment all the evidence is that we can confine, contain it and treat it effectively.”
The Health Protection Agency says there are 15 confirmed cases so far in Britain including two people who contracted the flu without having visited Mexico. Another 631 suspected cases are being investigated.
Also yesterday, local media in Colombia announced the first human case of swine flu in Colombia.
The 42-year-old man infected by the A(H1N1) swine flu lives in the town of Zipaquira, not far from the capital Bogota, the reports said.
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