Mexico says swine flu cases ‘levelling off’
Reported May 01, 2009
Mexico City (AP): Mexico’s top health official said the number of new swine flu cases is stabilising in the nation at the epicentre of the outbreak.
Health Secretary Jose Angel Cordova told a news conference he hoped the trend will continue and that a vaccine would be available in six months. European health ministers said they would speed efforts to develop such a vaccine.
The World Health Organization’s flu chief, reacting to similar comments from other Mexican officials, cautioned that case numbers often go up and down, and said the WHO had yet to see concrete evidence that swine flu, believed to have killed 168 people in Mexico, was levelling off. “What’s happening in one part of the country is not necessarily what’s happening in another part of the country.”
New cases of swine flu were confirmed in the United States and Europe a day after the WHO said the virus threatened to become a global epidemic and raised its alert level to Phase 5, the second-highest stage, for the first time.
Health officials in the United States said on Thursday the number of confirmed cases had risen to 109.
President Barack Obama told Americans the government was “taking the utmost precautions and preparations” to stop the virus.