Escalation of the Swine Influenza Pandemic

The continuation of the spreading of the swine flu in the United States following by the first case of death of a 2-year old boy who had recently visited Mexico prompting President Barack Obama to call the outbreak of swine flu a “serious situation” which required the “utmost precautions”.

In view of the development, an urgent meeting was held again by the World Health Organization in Geneva to discuss the seriousness of the current situation. After evaluating the data and latest development around the world, Dr. Margaret Chan, WHO’s Director-General has raised the current level of influenza pandemic alert from phase 4 to 5, indicating that every country in the world should remain high alert and detect any unusual cases of influenza-like illness and pneumonia immediately as the H1N1 virus could have the capacity to spread through each country quickly in addition to possessing the ability to mutate rapidly.

As of April 30, 2009, the effect of swine flu has been mild in the United States while comparing with the situation in Mexico, where swine flu had killed more than 150 people and sickening over 2,000. There were 91 cases of laboratory confirmed cases, 1 in Arizona, 14 in California, 1 in Indiana, 2 in Kansas, 2 in Massachusetts, 2 in Michigan, 1 in Nevada, 51 in New York, 1 in Ohio and 16 in Texas including 1 death. As the swine flu virus is relatively new and many people do not have immunity to the virus, medical professionals expect that the H1N1 virus will continue to spread with more cases of deaths in the coming weeks.