Post by Paddy by Grace on Apr 26, 2009 13:04:21 GMT -7
www.ottawacitizen.com/Health/Four+mild+swine+cases+Canada/1535987/story.html
Health officials in Nova Scotia and British Columbia are reporting “mild” cases of swine flu, the first confirmed cases since an outbreak of the illness began in Mexico several days ago.
As governments around the world rushed on Sunday to check the spread of a new type of swine flu that has killed up to 81 people in Mexico and infected around a dozen in the United States, Nova Scotia health officials said two of the four victims in that province, all students at the same private school, recently visited Mexico.
None have been hospitalized.
“We do have four confirmed cases of swine flu now in Nova Scotia,” said Dr. Robert Strang, chief public health officer for the province. “At this point, we are not seeing severe cases like we are in Mexico.”
He said authorities were working to contain the virus on the campus.
“All those who had the flu are recovering either at home or in the dormitory.”
A spokesman at the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control also told Reuters that that province had two confirmed cases.
Dr. Gaynor Watson-Creed, medical officer of health for the Capital District Health Authority in Nova Scotia, said health officials are investigating about 20 to 25 other potential cases at the school.
“One of the challenges with this illness is that it has been so mild that many of the students can’t really tell how sick they are,” she said, adding that most of the children just had a cough and fatigue. There may be many more children who had the virus and didn’t report they were sick because they felt fine, she said.
While some people at the school were wearing face masks over the weekend, Strang said wearing protective covering had not been recommended by health authorities.
While all the deaths so far have been in Mexico, the flu is spreading in the United States, and possible infections popped up as far afield as Europe and New Zealand.
About two-thirds of the 1,300 people in Mexico who were suspected of having swine flu were given a clean bill of health and sent home from the hospital, according to President Felipe Calderon.
He said more than 900 people had been declared healthy and nearly 400 others with flu-like symptoms were in hospitals being checked.
Calderon reassured Mexicans that the flu is curable with drugs and said Mexico has ample stocks of antiviral medicine.
“It’s very important to act fast and take this seriously, but it’s also very important to stay calm, cooperate with authorities and inform them of any cases that arise,” he said during a meeting of health officials.
In the United States, the Obama administration said Sunday it would be premature to talk about the potential impact of a new flu outbreak on a hoped-for economic recovery in the United States and the rest of the world.
“In terms of anything that is affected economically, both here and worldwide, it is probably far too early to determine whether that will be a case or whether that will have some factor,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg confirmed on Sunday that eight schoolchildren there had contracted virus, although the cases were mild and it did not appear to be spreading rapidly to the general population. Another 11 cases have been confirmed in California, Kansas and Texas.
In New Zealand, 10 students from a school party that had been in Mexico were being tested after showing flu-like symptoms.
The World Health Organization has declared the flu, of a type never seen before, a “public health emergency of international concern” and says it could become a pandemic, or a global outbreak of serious disease.
A 1968 “Hong Kong” flu pandemic killed about one million people globally.
Mexico City, one of the world’s biggest cities, practically ground to a halt on Sunday with restaurants, cinemas and churches closing their doors and millions staying at home.
Worshippers were told to follow Sunday church services on television and some residents abandoned the capital, a rambling, chaotic city of some 20 million people.
Michelle Geronis, 22, a film student, took a bus to be with her family in the central state of Aguascalientes.
“My parents heard the news and said, ’You know what? You’d better get here,’” she said.
In Spain, doctors checked three people who had returned from visiting Mexico and reported flu-like symptoms.
The new flu strain, a mixture of various swine, bird and human viruses, poses the biggest risk of a large-scale pandemic since avian flu surfaced in 1997, killing several hundred people.
WHO director general Dr. Margaret Chan urged greater worldwide surveillance for any unusual outbreaks of influenza-like illness.
Although it is called “swine flu” there is no evidence that any of the cases stemmed from contact with pigs, said Liz Wagstrom, a veterinarian who works on public health issues for the U.S. National Pork Board.
New flu strains can spread quickly because no one has natural immunity to them and a vaccine takes months to develop.
Authorities across Asia, who have had to grapple with deadly viruses like H5N1 bird flu and SARS in recent years, snapped into action. At airports and other border checkpoints in Hong Kong, Malaysia, South Korea and Japan, officials screened travellers for any flu-like symptoms.
Health officials in Nova Scotia and British Columbia are reporting “mild” cases of swine flu, the first confirmed cases since an outbreak of the illness began in Mexico several days ago.
As governments around the world rushed on Sunday to check the spread of a new type of swine flu that has killed up to 81 people in Mexico and infected around a dozen in the United States, Nova Scotia health officials said two of the four victims in that province, all students at the same private school, recently visited Mexico.
None have been hospitalized.
“We do have four confirmed cases of swine flu now in Nova Scotia,” said Dr. Robert Strang, chief public health officer for the province. “At this point, we are not seeing severe cases like we are in Mexico.”
He said authorities were working to contain the virus on the campus.
“All those who had the flu are recovering either at home or in the dormitory.”
A spokesman at the British Columbia Centre for Disease Control also told Reuters that that province had two confirmed cases.
Dr. Gaynor Watson-Creed, medical officer of health for the Capital District Health Authority in Nova Scotia, said health officials are investigating about 20 to 25 other potential cases at the school.
“One of the challenges with this illness is that it has been so mild that many of the students can’t really tell how sick they are,” she said, adding that most of the children just had a cough and fatigue. There may be many more children who had the virus and didn’t report they were sick because they felt fine, she said.
While some people at the school were wearing face masks over the weekend, Strang said wearing protective covering had not been recommended by health authorities.
While all the deaths so far have been in Mexico, the flu is spreading in the United States, and possible infections popped up as far afield as Europe and New Zealand.
About two-thirds of the 1,300 people in Mexico who were suspected of having swine flu were given a clean bill of health and sent home from the hospital, according to President Felipe Calderon.
He said more than 900 people had been declared healthy and nearly 400 others with flu-like symptoms were in hospitals being checked.
Calderon reassured Mexicans that the flu is curable with drugs and said Mexico has ample stocks of antiviral medicine.
“It’s very important to act fast and take this seriously, but it’s also very important to stay calm, cooperate with authorities and inform them of any cases that arise,” he said during a meeting of health officials.
In the United States, the Obama administration said Sunday it would be premature to talk about the potential impact of a new flu outbreak on a hoped-for economic recovery in the United States and the rest of the world.
“In terms of anything that is affected economically, both here and worldwide, it is probably far too early to determine whether that will be a case or whether that will have some factor,” White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg confirmed on Sunday that eight schoolchildren there had contracted virus, although the cases were mild and it did not appear to be spreading rapidly to the general population. Another 11 cases have been confirmed in California, Kansas and Texas.
In New Zealand, 10 students from a school party that had been in Mexico were being tested after showing flu-like symptoms.
The World Health Organization has declared the flu, of a type never seen before, a “public health emergency of international concern” and says it could become a pandemic, or a global outbreak of serious disease.
A 1968 “Hong Kong” flu pandemic killed about one million people globally.
Mexico City, one of the world’s biggest cities, practically ground to a halt on Sunday with restaurants, cinemas and churches closing their doors and millions staying at home.
Worshippers were told to follow Sunday church services on television and some residents abandoned the capital, a rambling, chaotic city of some 20 million people.
Michelle Geronis, 22, a film student, took a bus to be with her family in the central state of Aguascalientes.
“My parents heard the news and said, ’You know what? You’d better get here,’” she said.
In Spain, doctors checked three people who had returned from visiting Mexico and reported flu-like symptoms.
The new flu strain, a mixture of various swine, bird and human viruses, poses the biggest risk of a large-scale pandemic since avian flu surfaced in 1997, killing several hundred people.
WHO director general Dr. Margaret Chan urged greater worldwide surveillance for any unusual outbreaks of influenza-like illness.
Although it is called “swine flu” there is no evidence that any of the cases stemmed from contact with pigs, said Liz Wagstrom, a veterinarian who works on public health issues for the U.S. National Pork Board.
New flu strains can spread quickly because no one has natural immunity to them and a vaccine takes months to develop.
Authorities across Asia, who have had to grapple with deadly viruses like H5N1 bird flu and SARS in recent years, snapped into action. At airports and other border checkpoints in Hong Kong, Malaysia, South Korea and Japan, officials screened travellers for any flu-like symptoms.