WHO boosts pandemic alert level to 4

The stakes are getting higher:

The World Health Organization raised its global pandemic alert to Level 4 from Level 3 on Monday, meaning the global health body feels the virus causing the swine flu outbreak can easily transmit between people.

Dr. Keiji Fukuda, the WHO’s assistant director general, confirmed the change during a briefing from Geneva following an emergency meeting of the organization.

Countries should focus their efforts on mitigating the effects of the virus — which the WHO has confirmed has spread to Mexico, Canada, the United States and Spain — because containment is impossible, he said.

However, Fukuda added: "A pandemic is not considered inevitable at this time."

Fukuda said the WHO doesn't recommend closing borders or restricting travel but is encouraging people who are ill to delay travel.

"The deliberations of the emergency committee and the decisions of the director general really reflect a lot of very careful and sober discussion and a number of important considerations," said Fukuda.

Despite the WHO's comments, the European Union and the U.S. have advised against non-essential travel to Mexico because of the outbreak of the virus believed to have killed dozens in Mexico. Canada was expected to issue a similar advisory.

From here. Actually, my view is that the travel advisories don't go far enough; if I were in charge I'd be advising against all non-essential travel period, including domestic travel. The travel industry would shit, of course, but if you want to seriously tackle the issue, you need to take the bull by the horns.

Flu update...

Well, it seems that that British flight attendant does not have swine flu. On the other hand, there are some suspected cases in New Zealand, and a possible one in Israel. (On a side note, can you imagine the conclusions folks might have jumped to, and the consequences, if Israel -- or Iran or Pakistan, for that matter -- had been the site of the initial outbreak?) The news from this country is contradictory; this CBC story reports possible cases in Nova Scotia, but the most recent flu story in the Chronicle-Herald says otherwise. In any case, the CBC story quotes one specialist as saying fears are overblown:

A Toronto infection control specialist said it's important to keep the outbreak in perspective.

"This sounds like a pandemic — while it's not trivial — that is less severe. And less severe is something that we spent a lot of time planning for and a lot of time working on," Dr. Allison McGeer, director of infection control at Mount Sinai Hospital told CBC News.

Reassuring... maybe. Also interesting, and perhaps reassuring, is this:

A big question is: Just how deadly is the virus in Mexico?

The seasonal flu tends to kill just a fraction of 1 percent of those infected.

In Mexico, about 70 deaths out of roughly 1,000 cases represents a fatality rate of about 7 percent. The Spanish flu pandemic of 1918-19, which killed an estimated 50 million worldwide, had a fatality rate of about 2.5 percent.

The Mexican rate sounds terrifying. But it’s possible that far more than 1,000 people have been infected with the virus and that many had few if any symptoms, said Dr. Michael Osterholm, a prominent pandemic expert at the University of Minnesota. U.S. health officials echoed him.

“In Mexico, they were looking for severe diseases and they found some. They may not have been looking as widely for the milder cases,” said Schuchat of the CDC.

That actually makes a lot of sense. I know I freak out easily; maybe it's all the books I've read (The Stand, The Last Canadian, Earth Abides, etc).