Swine Flu’s Spread in Japan May Prompt WHO to Declare Pandemic
May 19 (Bloomberg) -- Dozens of swine flu cases in Japan may prompt the World Health Organization to declare a pandemic, a former WHO adviser said, spurring demand for vaccines to fight the contagion.
Japan reported its first locally-transmitted case on May 16, and the number of people infected with the virus, formally known as A/H1N1, has jumped to 135 from 4 in less than two weeks. Evidence of human-to-human transmission in a region outside North America may prompt the WHO to raise its pandemic alert to the highest level, said Hitoshi Oshitani, the former head of the agency’s Western Pacific region.
“Japan is definitely having human-to-human transmission,” Oshitani said yesterday in a telephone interview. “The WHO will have to take the Japanese cases into consideration when deciding whether to raise the pandemic alert.”
Margaret Chan, the WHO’s director-general, and United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon are scheduled to broker an accord with executives from drugmakers such as Sanofi-Aventis SA and GlaxoSmithKline Plc in Geneva today to ensure developing countries can gain access to pandemic vaccines.
The outbreak worldwide extended to 8,829 infections in 40 nations as health officials from more than 190 countries began a meeting yesterday of the World Health Assembly in Geneva to debate whether swine flu is spreading widely enough to upgrade the threat to level 6, and declare it the first pandemic since 1968.
New York Fatality
In the U.S., a New York assistant school principal became the sixth person in the nation to die of swine flu as a health official warned the outbreak may linger in North America as “summer influenza.”
Mitchell Wiener, a 55-year-old assistant principal at Intermediate School 238 in Queens, died May 17 at Flushing Hospital Medical Center, said Andrew Rubin, a hospital spokesman. The New York health department said yesterday it will shut three more schools to prevent the spread of the virus, raising the number of closures to 14 since last week when flu-like symptoms flared again among public school students.
“The H1N1 virus is not going away despite what you may have heard,” said Anne Schuchat, interim deputy director for science and public health for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. “It’s still circulating in the U.S. and people are continuing to get sick, to get hospitalized and to die.”
‘Very Unusual’
Flu season in the Northern Hemisphere usually ends this time of year as schools release students for vacation. The U.S. swine flu outbreak continues surging, which Schuchat said is “very unusual.”
“We wonder whether this strain will continue and give us a summer influenza,” Schuchat told reporters.
The typical summer recess for schools should help reduce the spread of H1N1, said William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, who is advising the CDC.
“My cloudy crystal ball thinks we will have low-level transmission throughout the summer,” Schaffner said yesterday in a telephone interview. “What’s happening now is that kids are exchanging the virus among themselves and then bringing it home to adults in the family. Once the children are dispersed out of school, transmission rates are likely to fall.”
Schuchat said swine flu’s symptoms are similar to those of seasonal flu, which causes the most severe complications in the elderly. The swine-derived virus is landing people ages 5 to 24 in hospitals more often than seasonal flu and hits fewer people older than 65, she said. People younger than 18 are more likely to become infected from another family member than are adults.
Long-time Immunity
A “working hypothesis” is that older adults were exposed to a virus “long ago” that gives them immunity against swine flu, Schuchat said. Another possibility is that “children are very good at transmitting, have lots of social contact, and they may shed the virus for a longer time,” Schuchat said.
Schaffner said that because so many health officials are tracking influenza so closely, it’s unlikely swine flu cases will be missed.
“If we’re looking harder we’re going to find more,” he said. “The question is how much more.”
The new H1N1 virus infected a woman arriving in the South Korean city of Incheon from Seattle, the fourth confirmed case in the Asian nation.
The 22-year-old transit passenger from Vietnam was quarantined at a South Korean hospital after she was suspected to have been infected with the virus, the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Family Affairs said today in an e-mailed statement.
To contact the reporter on this story: Simeon Bennett in Singapore at [email protected];
May 19 (Bloomberg) -- Dozens of swine flu cases in Japan may prompt the World Health Organization to declare a pandemic, a former WHO adviser said, spurring demand for vaccines to fight the contagion.
Japan reported its first locally-transmitted case on May 16, and the number of people infected with the virus, formally known as A/H1N1, has jumped to 135 from 4 in less than two weeks. Evidence of human-to-human transmission in a region outside North America may prompt the WHO to raise its pandemic alert to the highest level, said Hitoshi Oshitani, the former head of the agency’s Western Pacific region.
“Japan is definitely having human-to-human transmission,” Oshitani said yesterday in a telephone interview. “The WHO will have to take the Japanese cases into consideration when deciding whether to raise the pandemic alert.”
Margaret Chan, the WHO’s director-general, and United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon are scheduled to broker an accord with executives from drugmakers such as Sanofi-Aventis SA and GlaxoSmithKline Plc in Geneva today to ensure developing countries can gain access to pandemic vaccines.
The outbreak worldwide extended to 8,829 infections in 40 nations as health officials from more than 190 countries began a meeting yesterday of the World Health Assembly in Geneva to debate whether swine flu is spreading widely enough to upgrade the threat to level 6, and declare it the first pandemic since 1968.
New York Fatality
In the U.S., a New York assistant school principal became the sixth person in the nation to die of swine flu as a health official warned the outbreak may linger in North America as “summer influenza.”
Mitchell Wiener, a 55-year-old assistant principal at Intermediate School 238 in Queens, died May 17 at Flushing Hospital Medical Center, said Andrew Rubin, a hospital spokesman. The New York health department said yesterday it will shut three more schools to prevent the spread of the virus, raising the number of closures to 14 since last week when flu-like symptoms flared again among public school students.
“The H1N1 virus is not going away despite what you may have heard,” said Anne Schuchat, interim deputy director for science and public health for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. “It’s still circulating in the U.S. and people are continuing to get sick, to get hospitalized and to die.”
‘Very Unusual’
Flu season in the Northern Hemisphere usually ends this time of year as schools release students for vacation. The U.S. swine flu outbreak continues surging, which Schuchat said is “very unusual.”
“We wonder whether this strain will continue and give us a summer influenza,” Schuchat told reporters.
The typical summer recess for schools should help reduce the spread of H1N1, said William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, who is advising the CDC.
“My cloudy crystal ball thinks we will have low-level transmission throughout the summer,” Schaffner said yesterday in a telephone interview. “What’s happening now is that kids are exchanging the virus among themselves and then bringing it home to adults in the family. Once the children are dispersed out of school, transmission rates are likely to fall.”
Schuchat said swine flu’s symptoms are similar to those of seasonal flu, which causes the most severe complications in the elderly. The swine-derived virus is landing people ages 5 to 24 in hospitals more often than seasonal flu and hits fewer people older than 65, she said. People younger than 18 are more likely to become infected from another family member than are adults.
Long-time Immunity
A “working hypothesis” is that older adults were exposed to a virus “long ago” that gives them immunity against swine flu, Schuchat said. Another possibility is that “children are very good at transmitting, have lots of social contact, and they may shed the virus for a longer time,” Schuchat said.
Schaffner said that because so many health officials are tracking influenza so closely, it’s unlikely swine flu cases will be missed.
“If we’re looking harder we’re going to find more,” he said. “The question is how much more.”
The new H1N1 virus infected a woman arriving in the South Korean city of Incheon from Seattle, the fourth confirmed case in the Asian nation.
The 22-year-old transit passenger from Vietnam was quarantined at a South Korean hospital after she was suspected to have been infected with the virus, the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Family Affairs said today in an e-mailed statement.
To contact the reporter on this story: Simeon Bennett in Singapore at [email protected];
