Swine flu round up - May 11, 2009
All Nature’s swine flu coverage is collected on our news special page. These regular updates on The Great Beyond round up the latest from other news sources around the globe.
The WHO has confirmed the first swine flu death outside of the US and Mexico was the Canadian victim reported last week.
A death has also been confirmed in Costa Rica. In Mexico 48 people have died. In the US the number currently stands at three.
China has reported its first case of swine flu on the mainland. A previous case was reported in Hong Kong. Now state news agency Xinhua says a man in Sichuan Province has twice tested “weakly positive” to H1N1. This case has also been confirmed by the WHO.
Anne Schuchat, interim deputy director for science and public health of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the current sequence of the virus indicates it is not as bad as might have been feared.
“The good news so far is that the virulence markers for the 1918 and H5N1 influenza viruses do not appear in the H1N1 strain,” Schuchat says (Bloomberg).
However, she adds, “What we don’t know is whether there may be other virulence markers. Remember the first wave of the 1918 virus was mild and the next wave was devastating.”
Current WHO outbreak map:
