Japan shut 4,464 schools in six prefectures, up from 4,043 the central government originally asked to close, the education ministry said by fax today. WHO Director-General Margaret Chan yesterday endorsed a panel’s recommendation that drugmakers develop batches of swine flu vaccine for testing.

The spread in Japan of swine flu may prompt the WHO to declare a pandemic, according to Hitoshi Oshitani, former head of the agency’s Western Pacific region. Japan said its case total jumped to 188 from 4 less than two weeks ago, and Taiwan today reported its first patient infected with the virus known as H1N1, which has sickened about 10,000 people in 40 countries.

“The WHO will have to take the Japanese cases into consideration when deciding whether to raise the pandemic alert,” Oshitani said in a May 18 interview. “Japan is definitely having human-to-human transmission.”

The Geneva-based organization asked drugmakers to speed production of the protective shot for seasonal influenza, which can kill up to 500,000 people a year, while scientists take a few more weeks to select the fastest-growing strain of the virus to form the basis of a pandemic vaccine.

Because Chan adopted the panel’s recommendation, the same group will meet again in a few weeks to review the speed at which pharmaceutical companies are building their seasonal vaccine stockpiles as well as the spread and severity of H1N1.

Based on that assessment, they may recommend drugmakers switch from making seasonal flu vaccines to swine flu ones. Chan will then decide whether to endorse the panel’s advice.

Source from Bloomberg

What will it take for Hizzoner and the Health Department to shutter at least those buildings in the Queens school districts that have become the epicenter of this new epidemic?

At Public School 21 in Flushing, where the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed one swine flu case earlier this month, 164 of the school’s 800 students were absent Tuesday.

An additional 20 were sent home by the school nurse with flulike symptoms, PTA President Lorraine Kosnar said.

Meanwhile, 17 teachers - nearly 25% of the staff - are out sick. Several of those teachers are said to have reported high fevers.

At Intermediate School 227 in East Elmhurst, 60 students were sent home with flulike symptoms Monday, two school system sources said.

More than 460 pupils - a third of the entire student body - didn’t show up for class yesterday.

Yet both schools remain open for business.

So are dozens of other Queens schools that have witnessed huge spikes in student absences from flulike symptoms

Parent leaders say they know of several principals who requested that their schools be closed but were ordered to keep them open.

Source from NYDailyNews

The Health Protection Agency said six adults and eight children were among the latest cases in London, the south east and the east of England.

Eleven of the latest cases involve patients who were contacts of previously confirmed cases, while two were returning travellers.

The source of infection for the other person remains under investigation.

Tests on the virus have suggested the strain is less virulent than first feared and the World Health Organisation is not recommending any global travel restrictions.

In Mexico more than 60 people have died as a result of the H1N1 virus, with most cases reported in Mexico City.

Around the world, 39 countries have reported more than 8,400 cases of infection.

Source from SkyNews

Authorities have closed almost 600 schools in an effort to stop the spread of the virus.

Most of the students who have the disease have not recently travelled abroad.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) says the virus has spread to 39 countries.

The virus is behaving much like a seasonal influenza strain, spreading quickly and causing most people minor illness.

Seasonal flu kills 500,000 people each year.

The WHO raised its pandemic alert on April 29 to 5 on a scale of 6, meaning a pandemic is imminent.

Proof the disease was spreading in a region outside North America, where it originated, would trigger an increase to 6.

Sources from Reuters

About 100 children at the Ladybird nursery, including 20 under-twos, have been asked to stay at home for a week. Children and staff in close contact with the suspected case will be treated with antiviral drugs.

The news came barely 12 hours after more than 200 children at Ravenscraig primary school and an after-school club in Greenock were told to stay home for seven days because a five-year-old in the town was suspected of contracting the virus.

The cluster of swine flu cases in the coastal town on the Clyde appears to be connected to a 19-year-old man who was admitted to hospital on Saturday with a chest infection.

The 45-year-old mother of the five-year-old boy from Ravenscraig primary, who is also linked to the teenager, , is also thought to have swine flu.

Neither she nor her son have yet had been confirmed as having swine flu, but both tested positive for the influenza A group of viruses, which includes the H1N1 swine flu type, and have been in close contact with the 19-year-old.

All 23 children and teaching staff in the five-year-old’s class at Ravenscraig primary school will be given antiviral drugs, as will 18 children aged between five and 12 at his after-school club. Those children attend a number of schools in the town.

Nicola Sturgeon, the Scottish health secretary, said the school closures were a precautionary step to prevent the virus spreading.

The series of cases that broke out when the virus spread at Alleyn’s school in north London earlier this month showed health authorities that early action was essential to prevent a local outbreak.

Source from Guardian

The student had returned from vacation in Mexico in late April when he came down with the illness that has infected thousands of people in at least 30 countries, the Public Health Ministry said in a statement read on state-run television.

No details were given on the student’s condition.

The ministry said that, in all, it had found 84 people from eight countries with flu-like symptoms and that they and 511 other people who had contact with them had been tested for swine flu.

Those tested include 14 Mexican students, all of them studying in a Cuban medical school, but only the one case had been confirmed so far.

The Cuban government has taken a number of measures to prevent the H1N1 flu virus from reaching the Caribbean island, which has a population of 11.4 million and is located 115 miles across the Yucatan Channel from Mexico, epicenter of the swine flu outbreak.

Cuba has stepped up medical vigilance at airports, ports and marinas and on April 28 banned flights from Mexico.

The suspension of flights upset Mexican President Felipe Calderon, who said in a television interview last week that he might cancel a planned trip to Cuba “as one of the unforeseen consequences of decisions that have no technical basis.”

In an Internet column published on Monday night, former Cuban leader Fidel Castro took offense at Calderon’s threat to cancel. Castro said the trip had already been suspended for reasons unrelated to the flu outbreak.

“What was the Mexican president complaining about, with relation to the measures that Cuba adopted according to established norms and without the slightest intention of affecting our Mexican brothers?” he asked.

About the flu, Castro wrote, “The only thing that can be confirmed now is that it wasn’t brought here by the CIA. It came from Mexico.”

The 82-year-old Castro was replaced as president last year by his brother, Raul, but retains a powerful voice through columns published in state-run media.

In recent years, Cuba has become a popular tourist destination, receiving 2.3 million visitors from around the world in 2008.

Communist-led Cuba prides itself on its free healthcare and the government often acts aggressively to keep people safe during natural disasters like hurricanes.

Source from Reuters

“There’s no reason to fear, but people should be aware of it and take standard precautions,” Dr. Wilson said.

Those precautions include common courtesy such as covering your mouth when coughing and washing hands thoroughly.

Two of the three elementary school students have already recovered and a third has been staying at home for a week, Dr. Wilson said.

He noted they have at least one more specimen to be tested.

Guidelines from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention do not recommend closing schools when a case of flu caused by the virus has been found, Dr. Wilson noted.

Additional cases of the flu are being investigated in Newaygo and Oceana counties.

“It’s here, it’s probably the tip of the iceberg,” Dr. Wilson said of the virus, which so far has been discovered to be mild.

The flu does not spread easily and usually does not cause problems unless the patient is very old or very young, or suffers from a chronic illness.

Dr. Wilson said the flu is expected to fade out as we advance into summer, but could back in the fall in a different form.

Experts are now keeping an eye on what effect the virus has in the southern hemisphere where the flu season is just beginning.

“If it combines with other viruses and picks up a gene for resistance or easy communicability or being more deadly it could come back next flu season,” Dr. Wilson said.

Source from Cadillacnews

A Snohomish County man in his 30s with “underlying heart conditions” died last week from what appear to be swine flu- related complications, the state’s health department said in a statement on its Web site.

Still, the genetic blueprint of the new H1N1 virus sweeping the globe is “good news,” Anne Schuchat, interim deputy director for science and public health of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said yesterday. Swine flu, now in 29 countries, may yet exchange genetic material with other viruses and mutate into something worse, Schuchat told reporters in a conference call from Atlanta.

“The good news so far is that the virulence markers for the 1918 and H5N1 influenza viruses do not appear in the H1N1 strain,” Schuchat said. “What we don’t know is whether there may be other virulence markers. Remember the first wave of the 1918 virus was mild and the next wave was devastating.”

As swine flu spreads, its symptoms have been less severe than Mexico’s first fatalities suggested. That could change, Schuchat said. How the virus behaves as the Southern Hemisphere flu season begins, and whether it comes roaring back in the U.S. in a nastier form later, depends in part on whether its traits hold steady, mutate, or mingle with the deadly H5N1 bird flu circulating in Asia, Schuchat said.

The flu has sickened at least 3,440 in 29 countries, the World Health Organization said yesterday on its Web site, and killed at least 49, not including the Washington death. Costa Rica said a 53-year-old man who had diabetes and lung disease died, the first fatality outside North America, the Associated Press said.

U.S. Cases

The U.S. had nearly 3,000 cases as of yesterday, about 20 percent more than the day before, and “the numbers are likely a very great understatement,” Schuchat said.

“It’s too soon to say things are getting better. We’re still accelerating,” Schuchat said.

The U.S. confirmed 2,254 cases and two deaths in 45 states, and had 720 probable cases, Schuchat said. The increase came as test kits reached all states and laboratories processed backlogged samples from suspected patients, the CDC said.

Mexico, where the flu has hit hardest, confirmed 1,626 cases and 48 deaths, Health Minister Carlos Olmos told reporters yesterday in Mexico City. Stringent measures beginning with the national closing of schools saved more than 8,000 lives, Mexico officials said.

Norway became the 30th nation to confirm human infections, in two people aged in their 20s who returned home recently from Mexico, the Nordic nation’s Institute of Public Health said in a statement on its Web site yesterday.

Japan confirmed a fourth case and Australia’s Chief Medical Officer, Jim Bishop, told Nine Network television today more infections are inevitable in that country. Both nations confirmed their first cases yesterday. Hong Kong said it was holding two travelers for observation, after it released 351 people yesterday from a week-long quarantine.

Source from Bloomberg

Thankfully, no lives have been lost, at least so far, in either country. Despite lots of practice, when it comes to public health-oriented incident management, both Japan and China can tell that much work still needs to be done.

Several dozen Mexicans have now returned home wishing to forget how China swiftly singled them out once a confirmed case of H1N1 surfaced in Hong Kong. China has explained its response as a prudent public health measure, but it has demonstrated once again that what you do is often not as important as how you do it. A pivotal event took place on April 30, when China’s Health Minister Chen Zhu told the country and the world that China was fully prepared to handle H1N1.

Source from Asia Times Online