World health officials yesterday admitted they were powerless to halt the spread of swine flu and ratcheted up their pandemic alert level as the number of affected countries rose sharply.
As Mexico, epicenter of the outbreak, said 152 people were now believed to have died from the virus, the number of known cases in the US more than doubled, while six other countries said they had confirmed their first casualties.
Authorities in Asia — where memories of the SARS outbreak in 2003 remain fresh — tried to contain the spread of the virus, screening air passengers from affected areas and advising against non-essential travel to Mexico.
But the WHO said that border screenings “don’t work,” while the EU’s health commissioner said there was no need for travel restrictions.
“Border controls do not work. Screening doesn’t work,” WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl said in Geneva.
“If a person has been exposed or infected ... the person might not be symptomatic at the airport,” he said. “We learn as we go on. SARS was a huge learning experience for all of us.”
Keiji Fukuda, acting WHO assistant director-general for health, security and the environment, said late on Monday that given the widespread nature of the virus, all corners of the world are at potential risk.
“I think that in this age of global travel, where people move around in airplanes so quickly, there is no region to which this virus could not spread,” Fukuda said.
The outbreak was too “widespread to make containment a feasible” strategy, he added.
British tour operators, including Thomas Cook, halted holidays to Mexico after two people who returned to Scotland from a honeymoon in the resort town of Cancun fell ill with the swine flu virus.
Apart from Britain, the only confirmed case of the virus in Europe was in Spain, but suspected cases were being probed in Germany and Austria.
A total of 44 people are thought to have been infected in the US while Canada has six cases.
And in a further illustration of its global reach, Israel and New Zealand both confirmed their first swine flu patients.
In Asia, Thai medical authorities placed a woman in quarantine in hospital while South Korea investigated a “probable” victim.
Australia meanwhile probed 70 possible cases.
Also See: Asian countries working to keep swine flu at bay
Also See: Mexico faces heat over flu response
Also See: Swine flu outbreak hurting Mexico’s ailing economy
Taiwan has arranged for about 8 million barrels of crude oil, or about one-third of its monthly needs, to be shipped from the Red Sea this month to bypass the Strait of Hormuz and ease domestic supply pressures, CPC Corp, Taiwan (CPC, 台灣中油) said yesterday. The state-run oil company has worked with Middle Eastern suppliers to secure routes other than the Strait of Hormuz, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and liquefied natural gas typically passes, CPC chairman Fang Jeng-zen (方振仁) said at a meeting of the legislature’s Economics Committee in Taipei. Suppliers in Saudi Arabia have indicated they
A global survey showed that 60 percent of Taiwanese had attained higher education, second only to Canada, the Ministry of the Interior said. Taiwan easily surpassed the global average of 43 percent and ranked ahead of major economies, including Japan, South Korea and the US, data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) for 2024 showed. Taiwan has a high literacy rate, data released by the ministry showed. As of the end of last year, Taiwan had 20.617 million people aged 15 or older, accounting for 88.5 percent of the total population, with a literacy rate of 99.4 percent, the data
CCP ‘PAWN’? Beijing could use the KMT chairwoman’s visit to signal to the world that many people in Taiwan support the ‘one China’ principle, an academic said Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun (鄭麗文) yesterday arrived in China for a “peace” mission and potential meeting with Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平), while a Taiwanese minister detailed the number of Chinese warships currently deployed around the nation. Cheng is visiting at a time of increased Chinese military pressure on Taiwan, as the opposition-dominated Legislative Yuan stalls a government plan for US$40 billion in extra defense spending. Speaking to reporters before going to the airport, Cheng said she was going on a “historic journey for peace,” but added that some people felt uneasy about her trip. “If you truly love Taiwan,
NEW LOW: The council in 2024 based predictions on a pessimistic estimate for the nation’s total fertility rate of 0.84, but last year that rate was 0.69, 17 percent lower An expected National Development Council (NDC) report expects the nation’s population to drop below 12 million by 2065, with the old-age dependency ratio to top 100 percent sooner than 2070, sources said yesterday. The council is slated to release its latest population projections in August, using an ultra-low fertility model, the sources said. The previous report projected that Taiwan’s population would fall to 14.37 million by 2070, but based on a new estimate of the total fertility rate (TFR) — the average number of children born to a woman over her lifetime — the population is expected to reach 12 million by
RSS