Swine flu latest: Global pandemic declared
Swine flu global pandemic announced by World Health Organisation(This file is licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 License)
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Thursday, 11, Jun 2009 05:14
The World Health Organisation has declared that the swine flu outbreak is now officially a global pandemic.
Margaret Chan, WHO general secretary, said the world was now at the start of the 2009 influenza pandemic, the first in more than four decades.
"The virus is spreading under a close and careful watch, no previous pandemic has been detected so early, or watched so closely in real-time, right at the very beginning," she told a press conference on Thursday evening.
"The world can now reap the benefits of investment in the past five years in pandemic preparedness. This places us in a strong position."
In depth: Influenza pandemics
The UK Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) released a statement updating travel advice on the basis of the raised alert.
Dr Margaret Chan added that the further spread of the virus was "inevitable". But she insisted that the overwhelming majority of patients suffered mild symptoms and made a full recovery.
Meanwhile in the UK, the total number of cases has risen to 822 following 25 new cases in England and 47 in Scotland.
A move to level six will mark an upsurge in vaccine production, but drug companies have warned that it could take six months to bring them to the market.
There have been more than 27,000 swine flu cases and 141 since the virus first emerged in Mexico in late April.
No one has died outside of the Americas, but in recent weeks there have been hundreds of new cases in Japan, Australia and Europe.
And in Hong Kong all primary schools have now been closed for a fortnight after the first outbreak of the virus.
The last global pandemic was the Hong Kong flu of 1968.