A Texas woman with the H1N1 flu died earlier this week, state health officials said, the second death outside Mexico, where the epidemic appeared to be waning.
Officials said on Tuesday the woman, who was in her 30s, had chronic health problems. US health officials have predicted that the new virus would spread and inevitably kill some people, just as seasonal flu does.
Last week a Mexican toddler visiting Texas also died. Mexican officials have reported 29 confirmed deaths.
The WHO was monitoring the spread of the virus and said 21 countries had reported 1,490 cases. The US has 403 confirmed cases in 38 states, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said, with another 700 “probable” cases. Canada has reported 165 cases.
“Those numbers will go up, we anticipate, and unfortunately there are likely to be more hospitalizations and more deaths,” US Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said.
Health officials said the outbreak seemed to be slowing in Mexico, the country hardest-hit by the virus, which is a mixture of swine viruses and elements of human and bird flu. At the same time, infections were breaking out globally.
An aircraft carrying 97 Chinese stranded in Mexico by the flu scare was expected to arrive in Shanghai late yesterday and all on board appeared healthy, state media said.
“Doctors are monitoring the passengers’ health,” Xinhua news agency quoted China Southern airline as saying, describing them as being “in normal condition.”
An AeroMexico plane arrived in Shanghai on Tuesday to repatriate dozens of Mexicans who had become pawns in a drama about how far governments should go to stifle fears that the H1N1 virus could cross their borders.
None of the 43 Mexicans that Beijing quarantined had shown symptoms of the H1N1 flu virus, prompting Mexico to accuse China of discrimination.
China denied the allegation, saying isolation was the correction procedure.
Trade skirmishes over pork also worsened, with some countries imposing new restrictions, despite assurances by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization that pork, especially cooked pork, was safe to eat.
US and Canadian pig and pork exports have been hit by bans from Russia to Ecuador that rattled the US$26 billion-a-year global pork industry, in which Mexico, the US and Canada are among top exporters.
The question remained how far the virus would spread and how serious would it be. The WHO remained at pandemic alert level 5, meaning a pandemic could be imminent.
If it continues to spread outside the Americas, the WHO would likely move to phase 6, a full pandemic alert. This would prompt countries to activate pandemic plans, distribute antiviral drugs and antibiotics and perhaps advise people to take other precautions like limiting large gatherings.
Meanwhile, top health officials from 13 Asian countries were scheduled to meet in Thailand this week to try to forge a common front in the fight against the virus, the meeting’s chairman said yesterday.
Philippine Health Secretary Francisco Duque is to serve as chairman of the meeting, which is scheduled to be held in Bangkok tomorrow, as the world’s most populous continent tries to keep a lid on H1N1.
Health ministers from the 10-member ASEAN and their counterparts from China, Japan and South Korea will “compare our pandemic flu preparedness,” Duque told reporters in Manila.
The ministers are to review surveillance systems in place at ports of entry and measures to prevent the spread of the virus, he said.
They will also be looking at how health workers can be protected and the capacity of hospitals, he said.
The Philippines yesterday said its coast guard would acquire 40 fast patrol craft from France, with plans to deploy some of them in disputed areas of the South China Sea. The deal is the “largest so far single purchase” in Manila’s ongoing effort to modernize its coast guard, with deliveries set to start in four years, Philippine Coast Guard Commandant Admiral Ronnie Gil Gavan told a news conference. He declined to provide specifications for the vessels, which Manila said would cost 25.8 billion pesos (US$440 million), to be funded by development aid from the French government. He said some of the vessels would
CARGO PLANE VECTOR: Officials said they believe that attacks involving incendiary devices on planes was the work of Russia’s military intelligence agency the GRU Western security officials suspect Russian intelligence was behind a plot to put incendiary devices in packages on cargo planes headed to North America, including one that caught fire at a courier hub in Germany and another that ignited in a warehouse in England. Poland last month said that it had arrested four people suspected to be linked to a foreign intelligence operation that carried out sabotage and was searching for two others. Lithuania’s prosecutor general Nida Grunskiene on Tuesday said that there were an unspecified number of people detained in several countries, offering no elaboration. The events come as Western officials say
A plane bringing Israeli soccer supporters home from Amsterdam landed at Israel’s Ben Gurion airport on Friday after a night of violence that Israeli and Dutch officials condemned as “anti-Semitic.” Dutch police said 62 arrests were made in connection with the violence, which erupted after a UEFA Europa League soccer tie between Amsterdam club Ajax and Maccabi Tel Aviv. Israeli flag carrier El Al said it was sending six planes to the Netherlands to bring the fans home, after the first flight carrying evacuees landed on Friday afternoon, the Israeli Airports Authority said. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also ordered
Former US House of Representatives speaker Nancy Pelosi said if US President Joe Biden had ended his re-election bid sooner, the Democratic Party could have held a competitive nominating process to choose his replacement. “Had the president gotten out sooner, there may have been other candidates in the race,” Pelosi said in an interview on Thursday published by the New York Times the next day. “The anticipation was that, if the president were to step aside, that there would be an open primary,” she said. Pelosi said she thought the Democratic candidate, US Vice President Kamala Harris, “would have done
RSS