Concerns arose over the health of United States’ President Barack Obama weekend as one of the people he shook hands with on his recent trip to Mexico reportedly died suddenly of a lethal pork flu pandemic that has claimed 81 lives worldwide.
Obama had shaken hands with an archaeologist, Felipe Solis, who died of the disease soon after the encounter. The White House, however, said Obama’s health had not been endangered by his trip to Mexico City last week, in spite of reports in the Mexican press that an archaeologist who met the US leader, died soon after from “flu-like symptoms”.
With the high death toll and 1,300 people already infected, authorities across the globe have been warned against an economic standstill in world's major cities if the pandemic persists.
Meanwhile, doctors in America are advising worried patients to buy painters’ masks as a precaution against the outbreak as the epidemic spreads to US, New Zealand and possibly Europe.
As at yesterday, the US was still allowing people to cross the border from Mexico - where it is thought the swine flu emerged last week - although customs officials at the San Ysidro and Otay Mesa border crossings were given protective masks.
It is thought that eight people in US border towns have gone down with swine flu, while Mayor Michael Bloomberg also yesterday said a further eight cases had been confirmed among students in New York.
There have been no deaths north of the Mexican border, however, and as of yesterday the anti-viral drugs Tamiflu and Relenza were readily available from pharmacies in major cities.
One of the greatest concerns over the new strain of flu is that it is seems to target young, healthy adults - the same group affected by the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918 - which killed up to 100 million people.
Medical experts will meet tomorrow to advise the World Health Organisation (WHO) on whether to raise the current pandemic alert level.
“We need more epidemiological evidence from Mexico before the experts would be in a position to advise on a pandemic change,” Gregory Hartl, a WHO spokesman, said.
“An advisory body will recommend whether or not the director-general should up (raise) the phase. They are meeting again Tuesday,” he said.
The current pandemic alert level is 3 on a scale of 1 (low risk of human cases) to 6 (efficient, sustained transmission between humans).
About 15 international experts held a teleconference on Saturday to advise WHO Director-General Margaret Chan on measures to take to combat the outbreaks.
They stopped short of recommending a change in the pandemic alert level, saying that more data was required on the virus, including its way of spreading among humans.
Chan on Saturday declared the outbreaks a “public health emergency of international concern,” which means that there is a risk of the new disease spreading to other countries.
Drug makers said yesterday they could supply millions of doses of medicine and were ready to work on a vaccine against the new type of swine flu Reuters reported.
Roche Holding AG's Tamiflu, known generically as oseltamivir, and Glaxo SmithKline Plc's Relenza, or zanamivir, are both recommended drugs for seasonal flu and have been shown to work against viral samples of the new disease.
Tamiflu is expected to be in greatest demand should swine flu develop into a pandemic, as experts fear it may, since it is given as a tablet. Relenza must be inhaled.
Roche said it had a stockpile of three million packages of Tamiflu ready for use by the WHO, half held in the US and half in Switzerland.
“So far, the WHO has not requested we deploy this stockpile. Of course, as soon as the WHO requires that we deploy it we will do so,” said Roche spokeswoman Claudia Schmitt.
Both Roche and Glaxo said they were in contact with the WHO, US authorities and the government in Mexico.
The two companies have received contracts in recent years from individual governments and corporations for stockpiles of their medicines, following earlier fears over bird flu.