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Sophie Nicholson
April 27, 2009 - 4:39AM World health officials Sunday stepped up the battle against a new swine
flu, blamed for dozens of deaths in Mexico, as the US declared a public
emergency amid signs the disease was spreading.
The United States will screen visitors arriving in the US from infected
areas, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said, as 20 cases
were confirmed in five states. Suspected cases were also being investigated in Europe, the Middle East
and Asia, and four new infections were confirmed in Canada. Authorities in Mexico, where the new multi-strain swine flu was first
detected, confirmed 20 people have died and warned the death toll could
be as high as 81. Five people were said to have died in the capital in
the past 24 hours. "As we look for cases of swine flu, we are seeing more cases of swine
flu. We expect to see more cases of swine flu," Richard Besser, the
acting head of the Centers for Disease Control, told a White House press
conference. Besser said there were eight confirmed cases in New York City, seven in
California, two in Texas, two in Kansas and one in Ohio. US President Barack Obama is monitoring the swine flu outbreak closely
and has ordered a "very active, aggressive, and coordinated response,"
said White House homeland security advisor John Brennan. World Health Organization (WHO) officials warned Sunday the new strain,
apparently born when human and avian flu viruses infected pigs and
became mixed, could further mutate. "Yes, it's quite possible for this virus to evolve," Keiji Fukuda,
acting WHO assistant director-general for health, security and the
environment, told journalists in Geneva. "When viruses evolve, clearly they can become more dangerous to people." The WHO has already recommended that all nations "intensify surveillance
for unusual outbreaks of influenza-like illness and severe pneumonia." Thousands of people have begun wearing blue face masks to ward off
infection in Mexico where 1,324 people are being treated for flu symptoms. Two city zoos on Sunday joined schools, museums, theaters and music
festivals which have closed down, and authorities sought to shut down
bars and nightclubs. Church officials took the unusual step of canceling Sunday services in
this mainly Catholic country, after President Felipe Calderon gave his
government extraordinary powers to tackle the outbreak. "He's fine. He is just fine," she said without elaborating. Asian health officials also went on alert as the flu strain appeared to
have spread to New Zealand. Governments across the region, which has in recent years been at the
forefront of the SARS and bird flu epidemics, stepped up checks at
airports and urged the public to be on guard for symptoms of the new flu. Ten New Zealand students who recently traveled to Mexico are "likely" to
have contracted swine fever, Health Minister Tony Ryall said Sunday --
the first suspected cases in the region of more than three billion people. The European Commission said it was on alert Sunday for swine flu,
although there have not been any confirmed cases in Europe. France on Sunday reported four suspected cases of swine flu among
travellers returning from Mexico while six suspected cases were also
reported in Spain. In the first suspected swine flu case in the Middle East, a 26-year-old
Israeli man has been hospitalized in Netanya on returning from Mexico,
hospital officials told AFP. Russia Sunday banned meat imports from Mexico, several US states and
nine Latin American nations, a spokesman for Prime Minister Vladimir
Putin said. Although US officials said it is impossible to catch the flu
from eating meat. According to the WHO, pigs have already been factors in the appearance
of two previously unknown diseases that gave rise to pandemics in the
last century.
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