Health experts are fond of saying any new disease is just a flight away from anywhere, and a report published on Monday shows the new strain of H1N1 flu followed the airline route map as it spread around the globe.
The swine flu virus spread first and quickest in March and April in the US and Canada — where 80 percent of airline passengers traveled in March and April last year, researchers at St Michael’s Hospital in Toronto found.
Dr Kamram Khan of St Michael’s and colleagues used International Air Transport Association (IATA) data for their study. They said travel patterns were also similar in 2007 and therefore likely to be similar this year.
“This work provides the world with a potent early warning system for emerging infectious diseases,” Dr Michael Gardam of the Ontario Agency for Health Protection and Promotion said in a statement.
“Our analysis showed that in March and April 2008, a total of 2.35 million passengers flew from Mexico to 1,018 cities in 164 countries,” Khan and colleagues wrote in the New England Journal of Medicine, which published the report at h1n1.nejm.org.
Los Angeles had the most travelers, with 221,494 passengers arriving from Mexico in March and April last year. New York followed with 126,345.
The first non-US city was Toronto, No. 12, with 44,854 passengers arriving from Mexico.
The WHO has confirmed 70,893 cases of the new A(H1N1) swine flu pandemic, with 311 deaths. However, US health officials last week said there were likely at least 1 million cases there alone. Iraq, Lithuania, Monaco and Nepal all confirmed their first cases on Monday.
The first cases were detected in two California children in April, but tests showed the first known infections were in Mexico. By the time they had identified a new virus, US officials said it had spread too far and too fast to try to stop it.
“For the first time, we can quickly integrate information about worldwide air traffic patterns with information about global infectious disease threats,” Khan said.
“What this means is that cities and countries around the world can now respond to news of a threat earlier and more intelligently than ever before,” he said.
The researchers said the US receives more than 76 million visitors from around the world every year and the US and Canada together generate and receive about one-sixth of the global volume of international air traffic.
CONFRONTATION: The water cannon attack was the second this month on the Philippine supply boat ‘Unaizah May 4,’ after an incident on March 5 The China Coast Guard yesterday morning blocked a Philippine supply vessel and damaged it with water cannons near a reef off the Southeast Asian country, the Philippines said. The Philippine military released video of what it said was a nearly hour-long attack off the Second Thomas Shoal (Renai Shoal, 仁愛暗沙) in the contested South China Sea, where Chinese ships have unleashed water cannons and collided with Philippine vessels in similar standoffs in the past few months. The China Coast Guard and other vessels “once again harassed, blocked, deployed water cannons, and executed dangerous maneuvers” against a routine rotation and resupply mission to
GLOBAL COMBAT AIR PROGRAM: The potential purchasers would be limited to the 15 nations with which Tokyo has signed defense partnership and equipment transfer deals Japan’s Cabinet yesterday approved a plan to sell future next-generation fighter jets that it is developing with the UK and Italy to other nations, in the latest move away from the country’s post-World War II pacifist principles. The contentious decision to allow international arms sales is expected to help secure Japan’s role in the joint fighter jet project, and is part of a move to build up the Japanese arms industry and bolster its role in global security. The Cabinet also endorsed a revision to Japan’s arms equipment and technology transfer guidelines to allow coproduced lethal weapons to be sold to nations
Thousands of devotees, some in a state of trance, gathered at a Buddhist temple on the outskirts of Bangkok renowned for sacred tattoos known as Sak Yant, paying their respects to a revered monk who mastered the practice and seeking purification. The gathering at Wat Bang Phra Buddhist temple is part of a Thai Wai Khru ritual in which devotees pay homage to Luang Phor Pern, the temple’s formal abbot, who died in 2002. He had a reputation for refining and popularizing the temple’s Sak Yant tattoo style. The idea that tattoos confer magical powers has existed in many parts of Asia
ON ALERT: A Russian cruise missile crossed into Polish airspace for about 40 seconds, the Polish military said, adding that it is constantly monitoring the war to protect its airspace Ukraine’s capital, Kyiv, and the western region of Lviv early yesterday came under a “massive” Russian air attack, officials said, while a Russian cruise missile breached Polish airspace, the Polish military said. Russia and Ukraine have been engaged in a series of deadly aerial attacks, with yesterday’s strikes coming a day after the Russian military said it had seized the Ukrainian village of Ivanivske, west of Bakhmut. A militant attack on a Moscow concert hall on Friday that killed at least 133 people also became a new flash point between the two archrivals. “Explosions in the capital. Air defense is working. Do not