detailed preparation plans developed over the past five years have been a boon for officials struggling against the swine flu. But not everyone is reading from the same page, as shown at press conferences held today in the United States, Sweden and Switzerland. In part, this is because as useful as preparedness plans may be, "the microbes do not read the plan, and you need to move away from relatively short time plan after the first day," said Richard Besser, acting director of the Centers for Disease control and prevention.
As CDC, the World Health Organization in Geneva, and the European Centre prevention and control (ECDC) in Stockholm made clear, the country- and even states and cities in diseases custom-countries are making answers to their homes. Perspectives differ on containment strategies, including school closures, travel restrictions, and airport screenings . decisions vary as to when to report cases. and many localities were still limited, if any, the opportunity to test the new virus causing the epidemic. There is even a debate on whether to call the epidemic "swine flu" or not, with WHO and other renaming less catchy "H1N1 virus," and some calling it the "Mexican flu".
More countries will get to stick their fingers in this pie because the virus spreads rapidly. laboratory confirmed cases to 236 from 148 yesterday; and three other European countries have joined the list: the Netherlands, France (with a probable case), and Switzerland. Peru and Costa Rica are now areas of influenza, too. Even a member of the security team of President Barack Obama is suspected of catching swine flu during a recent visit to Mexico with the President. Because of this spread, Angus Nicoll, program manager of the flu ECDC, said today that it is "inevitable" that WHO will increase the alert level of the pandemic phase 5-6 and "it is just a question of when it will happen" But wHO said the situation has not changed. "There is nothing which suggests epidemiologically today that we should go to the Phase 6, "said Keiji Fukuda, WHO's assistant director general for health security and environment, in a briefing
[" There is a backlog of several thousand specimens to be tested, "Fukuda said.
Thanks to some additional tests, the number of confirmed cases in Mexico jumped to 97 from 26, but the number of deaths remains at 7. officials expect these numbers increase as the backlog is cleared.
meanwhile, senior health officials from various countries try to coordinate disease surveillance and with each other, to spend hours a transnational conference calls even then that quibble separately on details such as travel restrictions (considered unnecessary by the CDC and WHO, but recommended by some countries), and the importance of antiviral drugs. Identify any case, is also a priority, as determining when to limit social gatherings, such as Mexico did. "Countries are looking very hard for outbreaks" and governments "prepare business continuity plans," said Nicoll. This means considering what types of businesses or government operations could be briefly closed as the courts, and which ones, such as shipping of food, must remain open.
another source of confusion is the value of computer models to predict the trajectory of the virus. Besser said CDC used models to discuss issues such as closing the value of borders but stressed they had their limits. "Like many modelers you have, you will have the number of estimates," he said. Nicoll said that at this stage, we do not know enough about the virus to model reliably. Although this has not prevented "everyone at this stage" to look for data modeling, he noted.
Meanwhile, US Vice President Joseph Biden caused a stir earlier today when he said he would not travel by plane or subway, contradicting the advice of his boss and prompted the quick clarification of Mr. Biden's office.
Health Ministers of the European Union met in Luxembourg today about the response outbreak, while another meeting was underway in London to discuss whether vaccine manufacturers should spend efforts to produce a vaccine against the swine H1N1 rather than seasonal influenza vaccine an extremely difficult call given the uncertainties about H1N1 and how dangerous it is, and is likely to become.
CDC, the race to sequence the virus from those infected, said it is seeing "slight changes" in its genetic makeup, but Besser said, scientists of agency do not know what that means.
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