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.
In South Africa, one of two suspected swine flu suffers does not have the swine flu virus, influenza A (H1N1) virus. AFP says laboratory tests have confirmed that a woman recently returned from Mexico does not have the H1N1 virus. Test results are pending on the other possible case.
The virus may have reached the Republic of Ireland. Tony Holohan, chief medical officer at the country’s Department of Health, is expected to announce the results of tests on an adult male who recently returned from Mexico later today (Irish Times).
“This is a probable case which is likely to be positive,” says Bill Hall, chairman of the National Pandemic Influenza Expert Group (BBC).
In America the White House is insisting that President Obama is not at risk of H1N1, despite an aide who accompanied him on a recent trip to Mexico contracting an unidentified flu-like illness from which he has since recovered. The man didn’t come close to the president (AP).
The Guardian reports on the UN team trying to determine where the outbreak started. It’s proving tricky:
The Mexican government’s chief epidemiologist, Miguel Angel Lezana, said the virus may have originated in Asia, jumped to California and travelled south with migrant workers returning home to the village for Easter holidays. “I would not dare to say exactly where it began.”
Pork prices are falling, despite the insistence of experts that the virus cannot be caught from properly cooked meat (AP). Confusion is rife in Egypt however, where plans are being made to slaughter hundreds of thousands of pigs. AFP reports:
Egyptian Health Minister Hatem al-Gabali on Wednesday said the country would immediately begin the slaughter of all pig herds as a precaution against the novel flu strain. But on Thursday, health ministry spokesman Abdelrahman Shahine told AFP that the cull was a general health measure.
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In a statement issued after Egypt declared it would slaughter all pigs in the country, the World Organisation for Animal Health (OIE) said culling “will not help to guard against public or animal health risks presented by this novel A/H1N1 influenza virus.”
And, in the ‘surely that’s too soon’ category, H1N1 jokes are already starting to circulate. AFP notes that Mexico is managing to joke about the problem with gags doing the rounds including: “For a normal flu, we say ‘achoo’, but for swine flu we say ‘achoink’.” Maybe it loses something in translation.
Other jokes are riffing on ‘pigs might fly’ and ‘swine flu/flew’. The Daily Mail rounds up viral (groan!) images on H1N1 that are doing the rounds.
Pharmagossip has started marketing ‘Aporkalypse Now’ t-shirts alongside another vendor’s ‘I survived the great hamdemic of 2009’ jumpers.