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 worldwide number of swine flu cases has passed the five figure mark. While having 10,243 cases as opposed to yesterday’s 9,830 is not a sign of imminent doom, it’s another important reminder that we should be taking H1N1 seriously.
It follows Monday’s warning from WHO director-general Margaret Chan, who warned, “This virus may have given us a grace period, but we do not know how long this grace period will last. No one can say whether this is just the calm before the storm.”
And yesterday the WHO met vaccine manufacturers and insisted that an H1N1 treatment must be “made available in a spirit of equity and fairness”. This follows earlier concerns that developed nations – particularly the US – would lay claim to the majority of vaccine doses.
“In the name of solidarity, I have reached out to drug and vaccine manufacturers,” said Chan. “We will look at different mechanisms to make sure poor communities and countries are not left out.”
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To stop swine flu before it could sneak off airplanes arriving from North America, Japan dispatched masked health inspectors with fever-sensing guns to walk among passengers. But the flu has taken hold in this island nation anyway, with rapidly increasing numbers of confirmed cases in its western region.
Inmates at a Mexico City prison rioted Tuesday over restrictions on visits due to swine flu, as the country reported two more confirmed deaths, raising the toll to 74 nationwide.
– AP
As the co-discoverer of one of the key enzymes of the influenza virus and as someone who has written extensively about H5N1 avian flu, I do not count myself among the “flu experts” who believe that the World Health Organization and Dr. Margaret Chan, its director general, “performed well” during the current outbreak of H1N1 swine flu.
– Henry Miller, in a letter to the NY Times
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