The WHO is on tenterhooks waiting for any new developments and outbreaks

The official statistics coming from the World Health Organisation show that the number of confirmed cases of the swine influenza virus is now almost 6,500. The number of people who have died from this virus is 65 giving it a 1% fatality rate. In all 33 individual nations have reported the swine flu virus in their citizens but the majority of cases have occurred in Mexico and in the United States.

The WHO is on tenterhooks waiting for any new developments and outbreaks of the disease and are debating whether to declare a full blown worldwide pandemic situation which would be announced by elevating the pandemic alert scale to No.6 from its present position at level No. 5. In Mexico however the news is not all bad and the Mexican Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova claimed that the influenza virus was now infecting less people than before and should cause not more than 100 deaths nationwide.

Over half of the cases of swine influenza have occurred in the United States of America which has over 3,300 confirmed cases with three fatalities. Mexico has almost 2,500 confirmed cases but far more fatalities at 60 which some medical experts have put down to a poorer quality of health care and the fact that many of the deaths occurred before the severity of the swine influenza virus was fully understood. Canada is the only other nation worldwide which has had over 100 cases of this swine influenza virus reported. [Spain has exactly 100 cases at present].

It’s worth remembering that regular flu viruses kill around half a million people every year worldwide and most of these tend to be people who are elderly, who have underlying respiratory health conditions such as asthma or those people who smoke heavily. The swine influenza virus is a particularly potent virus and those people who have recovered from it have said that they never experienced flu like it!