Swine Flu News – April 26th

April 26 (Bloomberg) — International health officials are wrestling with how to respond to a swine flu from Mexico that’s infecting people, causing a range of illnesses, and even death.

The World Health Organization called the outbreak a “public health emergency of international concern” yesterday, and as many as 81 deaths in Mexico were linked to the virus, normally transmitted among pigs. Eleven cases in California, Kansas and Texas, all of them mild, have been connected as well, and at least eight students in New York are being tested for whether they match the Mexico strain, health officials said.

Fears of a lethal pandemic lie in the nature of flu germs, which mutate readily and can become virulent by exchanging genes with related influenza viruses. While the H5N1 bird virus that spread across Asia in the last few years, killing millions of fowl and several hundred people, never gained genes to spread easily among humans, the Mexican swine flu already has, said Malik Peiris, a microbiologist from the University of Hong Kong.

“The concern is that this virus has the ability to transmit from humans to humans because a number of the cases who got infection have had no direct exposure to swine,” said Peiris, who has studied the SARS and avian flu viruses. “That is certainly a cause for concern.”

Health officials said they are trying to determine how the virus gained its ability to infect and spread among humans.

Swine-Flu Emergency

Mexican President Felipe Calderon declared a swine-flu emergency, giving him powers to order quarantines and suspend public events in the nation, where 1,324 patients are hospitalized with flu-like symptoms.

Authorities closed schools until May 6 in Mexico City and the states of Mexico and San Luis Potosi, where infections have been concentrated, and canceled most public and official activities.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, an Atlanta-based agency, is leading the search for more cases than the 11 it has confirmed as of yesterday.

The latest U.S. tally includes two adults residing at the same address in Dickinson County, Kansas. Neither of the patients was hospitalized, the state’s health department said in a statement on its Web site yesterday. One is still ill and being treated, and one is recovering, it said. One of the patients had recently traveled to Mexico, flying in and out of Wichita, according to the statement.

New Zealand Students

Three teachers and 22 students from Auckland’s Rangitoto high school are being tested for swine flu after returning to New Zealand’s most populous city from Los Angeles following a three week trip to Mexico, Stuff.co.nz reported on its Web site. Some of the travelers had symptoms of flu-like illness and were being isolated as a precaution pending test results, it said, citing Auckland’s public health service.

Japan began screening for fever in travelers returning from Mexico fevers, the country’s health ministry said in a statement yesterday. A British Airways Plc crewmember was hospitalized in north London with suspected swine flu after arriving yesterday on a flight from Mexico City. Tests showed he doesn’t have the bug, Agence France-Presse said, citing a hospital spokesman.

Outbreaks in Mexico and the U.S. warrant an urgent assessment of its potential to spark the first influenza pandemic in 41 years, the WHO said yesterday. The Geneva-based United Nations agency held an emergency meeting and found that more evidence is needed to determine whether the level of pandemic alert should be increased, it said.

Pandemic Threat

The WHO’s pandemic threat level, a six-stage measure, is currently at 3. Evidence of increased human-to-human spread of a new virus would move it to level 4, according to the WHO Web site.

Health officials in the U.S. are asking both doctors and patients to be on the lookout for suspicious cases of flu. The lung virus normally causes symptoms such as coughing and sneezing, and can also bring on muscle and joint aches, headaches, and even diarrhea and vomiting, according to the CDC.

At a time when scientists can tailor drugs to match a patient’s genetic profile and people live longer than ever, the flu, first described by Hippocrates 2,400 years ago, still has the power to make millions bed-bound for a week and kill the very young, the elderly and those weakened by chronic disease.

The CDC estimates the germ is linked to more than 30,000 U.S. deaths annually.

In most cases, adults can resist succumbing to flu viruses that are identical or very similar to those they’ve been exposed to before. “New” viruses that the human immune system hasn’t seen earlier are the most dangerous, because they can overwhelm the body’s defenses.