it is very difficult to predict exactly what will happen

In America, Barack Obama has declared that the new outbreak of swine influenza as a Public Health Emergency which allows health authorities to take direct action to control the problem. Swine influenza cases have been reported in at least five American states, and in Mexico where the virus originated the number of cases is in the thousands.

The American government has taken steps to distribute about 12 million capsules of the influenza drug Tamiflu in a bid to try to protect its citizens from the deadly symptoms of this new flu outbreak. The drug Tamiflu will be issued in States where cases have been reported such as Texas, Ohio, Kansas, California and New York especially because of a concern that children could spread the virus quickly in schools.

The Mayor of New York City, Michael Bloomberg explained that around 100 students had developed symptoms of influenza and samples had been sent to laboratories where it was found that they were “probably swine flu”.  He went on to explain that influenza samples had been immediately flown to the Centre for Disease Control based in Atlanta where a sophisticated new test could identify them quickly as being the H1N1 variant of the swine influenza virus.  Janet Napolitano, the Secretary of Homeland Security said that airports were checking people for influenza symptoms coming into America from countries where the H1N1 flu virus had been reported, which it was hoped would lessen the spread of the virus.

At this point in time in the early stage of the outbreak it is very difficult to predict exactly what will happen and while health authorities around the world are confident that they can do a lot to contain the problem the reality is that nobody is really aware of the full extent of the problem yet.