Swine flu outbreak shut down economy in mexico

Mexican President Felipe Calderon told his people to stay home from Friday for a five-day partial shutdown of the economy, after the World Health Organization said a swine flu pandemic was imminent. Calderon ordered government offices and private businesses not crucial to the economy to stop work to avoid further infections from the new virus, which has killed up to 176 people in Mexico and is now spreading around the world.
"There is no safer place than your own home to avoid being infected with the flu virus," Calderon said in his first televised address since the crisis erupted last week.
Twelve countries have reported cases of the H1N1 strain, with the Netherlands the latest to join the list. It said a three year-old child had contracted the virus.
Switzerland also confirmed its first case on Thursday, saying a man returning from Mexico had tested positive for the flu. Peru reported the first case in Latin America outside Mexico.
Texas officials on Wednesday reported the first swine flu death outside Mexico, a 22-month-old Mexican boy on a visit.
The WHO raised the official alert level to phase 5, the last step before a pandemic.
"Influenza pandemics must be taken seriously precisely because of their capacity to spread rapidly to every country in the world," WHO Director General Margaret Chan told a news conference in Geneva on Wednesday. "The biggest question is this: how severe will the pandemic be, especially now at the start," Chan said.
The world "is better prepared for an influenza pandemic than at any time in history," she said. WHO has stopped short of recommending travel restrictions, border closures or any limitation on the movement of people, goods or services. WORLD STOCK MARKETS RALLY
Mexico's peso currency weakened sharply early on Thursday after the government called for chunks of the economy to close. The peso fell 1.6 percent to 13.83 per dollar.
But world stocks struck a four-month peak, powered by gains in Asia on Thursday, as investors took heart from signs of improvement in the U.S. economy. arlier in the week markets fell on worries that a major flu outbreak could hit the struggling global economy. Almost all those infected outside Mexico have had mild symptoms, and only a handful of people have been hospitalized.
In Mexico City, a metropolis of 20 million, all schools, restaurants, nightclubs and public events have been shut down to try to stop the disease from spreading, bringing normal life to a virtual standstill.

Spain reported the first case in Europe of swine flu in a person who had not been to Mexico, illustrating the danger of person-to-person transmission. Several countries have banned pork imports though the World Health Organization says swine flu is not spread by eating pork.
President Barack Obama said told an evening news conference at the White House on Wednesday there was no need for panic and rejected the possibility of closing the border with Mexico.
"At this point, (health officials) have not recommended a border closing," he said. "From their perspective, it would be akin to closing the barn door after the horses are out, because we already have cases here in the United States." Obama also praised his predecessor for stockpiling anti-viral medication in anticipation of such an outbreak.
"I think the Bush administration did a good job of creating the infrastructure so that we can respond," Obama said. "For example, we've got 50 million courses of anti-viral drugs in the event that they're needed."
EXPERT SAYS VIRUS RELATIVELY WEAK
Masato Tashiro, head of the influenza virus research center at Japan's National Institute of Infectious Disease and a member of the WHO emergency committee, told Japan's Nikkei newspaper it appeared the H1N1 strain was far less dangerous than avian flu.
"I am very worried that we will use up the stockpile of anti-flu medicine and be unarmed before we need to fight against the avian influenza. The greatest threat to mankind remains the H5N1 avian influenza." Guan Yi, a microbiologist at the University of Hong Kong, said the swine flu virus could mix with avian flu, or H5N1. "If it goes to Egypt, Indonesia, these H5N1 endemic regions, it could turn into a very powerful H5N1 that is very transmissible among people. Then we will be in trouble, it will be a tragedy." The WHO's Chan urged companies who make the drugs to ramp up production. Two antiviral drugs -- Relenza, made by GlaxoSmithKline and Tamiflu, made by Roche AG and Gilead Sciences Inc -- have been shown to work against the H1N1 strain. Mexico's central bank warned the outbreak could deepen the nation's recession, hurting an economy that has shrunk by as much as 8 percent from the previous year in the first quarter. The United States and Canada have advised against non-essential travel to Mexico, and the European Union's health commissioner advised against non-essential travel to areas badly hit by swine flu. Many tourists were hurrying to leave Mexico, crowding airports.
Japan's Masato Tashiro said the possibility of an overreaction to the outbreak was a concern. "Excessive curbing of corporate activity will be a problem. The best course of action is to adopt rational measures." (Reporting by Maggie Fox and Tabassum Zakaria in Washington;
Jason Lange, Catherine Bremer, Alistair Bell and Helen Popper in Mexico City; Laura MacInnis and Stephanie Nebehay in Geneva and Yoko Nishikawa in Tokyo; writing by Andrew Marshall and Dean Yates; editing by Philippa Fletcher)

U.S. confirmed First swine flu death as cases increase

A 22-month-old child became the first swine flu fatality in the United States Wednesday, as the number of confirmed cases of the virus increased.

An official at the World Health Organization said Wednesday evening that his agency had confirmed 114 cases of swine flu worldwide. However, that number did not include additional cases announced by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), now at 91.
The WHO was still listing 64 swine flu cases for the United States. "It's clear that the virus is spreading, and we don't see it slowing down at this point," said Dr. Keiji Fukuda, assistant director-general of WHO, at a news conference.
Meanwhile, a spokeswoman for Houston's Health Department told CNN that the dead child had traveled from Mexico to Houston, for treatment.
Kathy Barton said the child, who died Monday, was not an American citizen. She did not know where the child was from in Mexico.
President Barack Obama expressed his condolences to the family and called on schools in the U.S. with confirmed or possible swine flu cases to "strongly consider temporarily closing so that we can be as safe as possible."
The apparent spread of swine flu was not unexpected, CDC acting director Dr. Richard Besser told CNN.
"Flu is a very serious infection and each virus is unique, and so it's hard to know what we're going to be seeing," Besser said. "But given what we've seen in Mexico we have expected that we would see more severe infections and we would see deaths."
Six of the 91 confirmed swine flu cases in the United States have been reported in Texas, according to the CDC.

A preliminary image of the swine flu virus from the Centers for Disease Control.
The United States is taking precautionary measures to stem the spread of the disease, of which most cases are not severe.
U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Wednesday that the federal government would be releasing nearly 13 million doses of antiviral medications to try to stem the spread of the virus.
Besser added that the CDC is "taking aggressive action to try and limit the impact of this on our communities," but is not changing its recommendations as a result of the confirmed swine flu death.
"I expect we'll see more cases," Besser said. "And as we do, we'll learn more about this, and if there needs to be more stringent or less stringent recommendations, we'll be making those."
He stressed that people should maintain their perspective on the swine flu outbreak.

"Seasonal flu each year causes tens of thousands of deaths in this country, on average, about 36,000 deaths," Besser said. "And so this flu virus in the United States, as we're looking at it, is not acting very differently from what we saw during the flu season."
Germany and Austria became the latest European countries to report swine flu, while the number of cases increased in Britain and Spain.
Mexico is where the global outbreak originated. While only 26 cases have been confirmed in Mexico -- including the seven deaths -- health officials there suspect the swine flu outbreak has caused more than 159 deaths and roughly 2,500 illnesses.
They also believe they may have found "patient zero" in the global outbreak in the small village of La Gloria in the mountains of Mexico.
Five-year-old Edgar Hernandez -- known as "patient zero" by his doctors -- survived the earliest documented case of swine flu in the current outbreak. He lives near a pig farm, though experts have not established a connection between that and his illness.

Edgar has managed to bounce back from his symptoms and playfully credits ice cream for helping him feel better.
Researchers do not know how the virus is jumping relatively easily from person to person, or why it's affecting what should be society's healthiest demographic. Many of the victims who have died in Mexico have been young and otherwise healthy.
The deadly outbreak in Mexico has prompted authorities to order about 35,000 public venues in Mexico City to shut down or serve only take-out meals as health officials tried to contain spreading of the virus.
Governments around the world are scrambling to prevent further outbreak.

Some, such as China and Russia, have banned pork imports from the United States and Mexico, though the World Health Organization says the disease is not transmitted through eating or preparing pig meat. Several others countries, such as Japan and Indonesia, are using thermographic devices to test the temperature of passengers arriving from Mexico.

Obama said the outbreak is a cause for concern, not for alarm. The U.S. government has urged travelers to avoid non-essential travel to Mexico.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has issued emergency authorization for the use of two of the most common anti-viral drugs, Tamiflu and Relenza. The authorization allows the distribution of the drugs by a broader range of health-care workers and loosens age limits for their use.
In Mexico City, however, there is a shortage of such medication. And it became impossible to find protective surgical masks, which the government had handed out to one out of every five residents.

Swine influenza, or flu, is a contagious respiratory disease that affects pigs.
When the flu spreads person-to-person, instead of from animals to humans, it can continue to mutate, making it harder to treat or fight, because people have no natural immunity.

Symptoms include fever, runny nose, sore throat, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea.

Common seasonal flu kills 250,000 to 500,000 people every year worldwide, far more than the current outbreak of swine flu.

U.S.,swine flu alert level

The World Health Organization has raised its pandemic alert level in response to the outbreak of swine flu that originated in Mexico.

The move to a level four alert indicates the world body has determined the virus is capable of significant human-to-human transmission.
Dr. Keiji Fukuda, WHO assistant director-general, said the move did not mean a pandemic was inevitable. He added the agency would focus efforts on mitigating, rather than containing, the virus. Fukuda said it was too early to predict whether there will be a mild or serious pandemic.

Relatives of flu patients wait outside Mexico's National Institute of Respiratory Diseases.

More cases were confirmed Monday in the United States, Canada and Europe. The WHO said the U.S. has confirmed 47 cases, Mexico 26, Canada six and Spain one. Two more were confirmed in Scotland. In Mexico the virus is believed to be responsible for at least 149 deaths -- though most of those have not yet been confirmed -- while almost 2,000 have been hospitalized. Some health experts fear the disease could become a pandemic, partly because it has killed young, healthy adults in Mexico. Health Secretary Jose Angel Cordova Villalobos said, "The number of cases, unfortunately, will continue to increase.

Mexico closed all schools until at least May 6 to help curb the spread of swine flu, officials announced Monday.
A U.S. federal official confirmed the U.S. figure -- up from 20 with all the new cases coming from a New York school where eight cases were previously confirmed.U.S. President Barack Obama said Monday that the outbreak was a "cause for concern" but not a "cause for alarm."
He said the federal government was "closely monitoring" emerging cases and had declared a public health emergency as a "precautionary tool" to ensure the availability of adequate resources to combat the spread of the virus.
Health Library :MayoClinic.com: Influenza (flu)
Israel and New Zealand, where 22 students and three teachers were quarantined after returning for a three-week trip to Mexico, are also investigating suspected cases. South Korea says it will test travelers arriving from the U.S.

A security guard at the Spanish hospital where a man is being treated

Swine flu is a contagious respiratory disease that usually affects pigs. It is caused by a type-A influenza virus. The current strain is a new variation of an H1N1 virus, which is a mix of human and animal versions.
When the flu spreads person-to-person, instead of from animals to humans, it can continue to mutate, making it harder to treat or fight off because people have no natural immunity.
The symptoms are similar to common flu. They include fever, lethargy, lack of appetite, coughing, runny nose, sore throat, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea.

The virus spreads when an infected person coughs or sneezes around another person. People can become infected by touching something with the flu virus on it and then touching their mouth, nose or eyes.
In 1968, a "Hong Kong" flu pandemic killed about 1 million people worldwide. And in 1918, a "Spanish" flu pandemic killed as many as 100 million people
Dr. Richard Besser, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, Georgia, said only one of the U.S. cases has been hospitalized, and all have recovered.
The European Union's health commissioner Monday urged people "to avoid non-essential travel to the areas which are reported to be in the center of the clusters" of a swine flu outbreak.
Andorra Vassiliou's latest comments soften an earlier statement urging people "to avoid traveling to both Mexico and the United States due to concerns about swine flu."

The EU issued a statement clarifying that Vassiliou's remarks were her personal comments and that travel advisories can be issued only by member states and not by the EU itself.
The first case of swine flu in Europe was confirmed Monday in Spain. Health minister Trinidad Jimenez said a 23-year-old man who returned from studying in Mexico last Wednesday tested positive for the virus at a hospital in the country's southeast.
At least 16 more cases are being treated as possible swine flu, Jimenez told a news conference. Earlier, Jimenez met with health officials to discuss Spain's response to the crisis.

"We do not have an emergency situation in Spain, but we are working to prevent any possible development, and we are taking action in accord with the World Health Organization," she said.
Spain's Ministry of Health has urged travelers recently returned from Mexico and the U.S. to be on the lookout for symptoms of the virus, including fever, coughing and respiratory problems.
A few hours later, Scottish Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon said, "Tests have demonstrated conclusively that the two Scottish cases of swine flu are positive."
U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said: "We are concerned that this virus could cause a new influenza pandemic. It could be mild, in its effects, or potentially be severe. We do not yet know which way it will go. But we are concerned that, in Mexico, most of those who died were young and healthy adults.
Dr. Besser, of the CDC, said the EU warning was "not warranted

controversy of Swine flu creates on Twitter

The swine flu outbreak is spawning debate about how people get information during health emergencies -- especially at a time when news sources are becoming less centralized.

Some observers say Twitter -- a micro-blogging site where users post 140-character messages -- has become a hotbed of unnecessary hype and misinformation about the outbreak, which is thought to have claimed more than 100 lives in Mexico.

Buzz about swine flu on Twitter is stirring conversations about how people get health news.
"This is a good example of why [Twitter is] headed in that wrong direction, because it's just propagating fear amongst people as opposed to seeking actual solutions or key information," said Brennon Slattery, a contributing writer for PC World. "The swine flu thing came really at the crux of a media revolution."
Twitter's popularity has exploded in recent months, and Slattery said it's a new development that a wide number of people would turn to the site in search of information during an emergency.
Others take a softer approach to the buzz on Twitter.
Writing for CNET, a CNN partner site, Larry Magid advises online readers to take medical advice with a grain of salt.
The Internet is "a great way to get general information, prevention tips and information on how to handle a known condition, but be cautious when using it to try to diagnose yourself," he writes.

Several dozen cases of swine flu worldwide have been confirmed by the World Health Organization and hundreds more are feared.

That information needs to be put in context by journalists, especially given the fact that so many deaths from the common flu occur each year and go underreported by the news media, said Al Tompkins, who teaches broadcast and online news at the Poynter Institute, a school for journalists.
About 36,000 people die from flu-related symptoms each year in the United States, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,
The fast pace of new swine flu cases and their relevance to global public health policy makes the situation newsworthy, Tompkins said.
Tompkins said there is a tendency for television stations to hype health emergencies to boost their ratings, but so far coverage of the swine flu outbreak has been responsible. Coverage of the story is just ramping up, though, he said.
Of the swine flu news on Twitter, Tompkins said, "Bad news always travels faster than good news. I'm sure that was true in smoke signal days."
Unofficial swine flu information on Twitter may lead people to unwise decisions, said Evgeny Morozov, a fellow at the Open Society Institute and a blogger on ForeignPolicy.com.
For example, some Twitter users told their followers to stop eating pork, he said. Health officials have not advised that precaution.

Morozov said there's incentive for Twitter users to post whatever is on their mind because it helps them grow their online audiences.
But in an emergency, that tendency means people write about their own fears of symptoms and widespread deaths, which can create an uninformed hysteria, he said.
The debate about swine flu on Twitter is not one-sided, however. And the site is not the only place online where people are talking about the outbreak.
Some Twitter users have expressed concern that the swine flu story is being hyped. Several media outlets, including the BBC and CNN's iReport.com, give readers and viewers a chance to express their own views about the outbreak.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention also maintains its own Twitter account where official government information is given straight to the public.
And on Monday, President Obama seemed to try to calm national fears by saying the outbreak is "cause for concern and requires a heightened state of alert" but is not a "cause for alarm," CNN reported.
Twitter traffic about swine flu has been strong. According to Nielsen Online, swine flu has worked its way into about 2 percent of all notes posted on the site on Monday. You can follow that Twitter conversation here.
Chatter about swine flu is also loud elsewhere online. About 10 times more people are writing online about swine flu than wrote about the salmonella and peanut butter scares from this winter, Nielsen says.
On Google, an interactive map lets Internet users see where outbreak deaths have been confirmed and where they are suspected.

Slattery, the PC World writer, said he generally was excited about Twitter until recently. Now he finds the site to be "an incredibly unreliable source of information."
Tompkins said people who post information on social media sites should think about the credibility of their sources before they pass something on.

U.S. swine flu case unbelievable numbers rise; Possible to more

More than 40 people in five states have been sickened by new strain of swine flu that doctors fear may cause a pandemic, U.S. officials said on Monday, promising more cases to come.
Schools were ordered closed in California and Texas, while nervous investors sent U.S. stock prices tumbling on expectations that the flu outbreak could further undermine the economy, which is struggling in recession.
President Barack Obama said he was monitoring the situation while bad news piled up from southern neighbor Mexico, where up to 149 people have died and more than 1,600 have been infected by the never-before-seen virus.
The U.S. government on Sunday declared the flu strain a public health emergency -- a fresh challenge for the Obama administration, which is still mindful of the damage inflicted on his predecessor George W. Bush over his government's inept handling of Hurricane Katrina in 2005. No American deaths have been reported and most affected by the virus had light symptoms, recovering fast. But it has popped up in New York, Ohio, Kansas, Texas and California as well as Canada and Europe, raising fears of a pandemic.
"This is obviously a cause for concern and requires a heightened state of alert. But it is not a cause for alarm," Obama told a meeting of the National Academy of Sciences.
In New York City, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said more than 100 sick students at a high school in Queens were being tested and that 45 were confirmed or likely cases of swine flu.
"We believe that there are probably more than 100 cases of swine flu at the school and lab tests are confirming what we have suspected," he told a news conference.
A first case was confirmed in northern California, where a student was found with the virus at a school in a Sacramento suburb. The school was closed. Ten other cases have been confirmed in southern California close to Mexico's border.
Texas, meanwhile, confirmed a third case of swine flu near San Antonio. All three cases involve students at the same school, and Texas officials have closed 14 area schools in an attempt to contain it.
Department of Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano said inspections were being boosted at U.S. borders and airports, while the national stockpile of antiviral drugs was being activated and should be fully deployed by May 3.
The U.S. State Department urged Americans on Monday to avoid all "nonessential" travel to Mexico over the next three months because of the flu outbreak.
NO HEALTH SECRETARY
The flu scare comes as the Obama administration seeks to fill a number of senior health vacancies.
Obama's choice for health secretary, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, has not yet been approved by the Senate where some Republicans are upset over her support for abortion rights, but Democrats hope Sibelius will get the nod soon.