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WORLD> America
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US confirms 2nd H1N1 flu death in Texas
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-05-06 09:44 HOUSTON - A Texas woman with the new A (H1N1) flu died earlier this week, health officials said on Tuesday, the second death outside of Mexico, where the epidemic appeared to be waning.
The World Health Organization was monitoring the spread of the virus and said 21 countries have officially reported 1,490 cases. The United States has 403 confirmed cases of the flu in 38 states, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said, with another 700 "probable" cases. US Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius warned that "those numbers will go up, we anticipate, and unfortunately there are likely to be more hospitalizations and more deaths." Canada has reported 165 cases.
Pandemic Alert The question remained how far the virus would spread and how serious would it be. The WHO remained at pandemic alert level 5, meaning a pandemic is imminent. "If it spreads around the world you will see hundreds of millions of people get infected," the WHO's Dr. Keiji Fukuda told a news briefing. If it continues to spread outside the Americas, the WHO would likely move to phase 6, a full pandemic alert. This would prompt countries to activate pandemic plans, distribute antiviral drugs and antibiotics and perhaps advise people to take other precautions like limiting large gatherings. "It's not so much the number of countries, but whether the virus sets up shop in any of those countries like it has here and starts to spread person to person. And given the number of countries that have cases, one would think that eventually that criteria would be met," said acting CDC director Dr. Richard Besser. He and Fukuda said it would be important to watch the Southern Hemisphere, where winter and the flu season are just beginning. |
