Australia: Rudd defends swine flu threat upgrade

[Sally Furniss]

Australia raises its swine flu alert level
Updated at: 1335 PST, Friday, May 22, 2009
SYDNEY: Australia raised its swine flu alert level Friday, after 10 new cases of the virus were confirmed in the country this week.

The upgrade from the ``delay'' to ``contain'' phase means extra measures will likely be put in place across the country to try and contain the spread of swine flu, Health Minister Nicola Roxon said. There are three more serious levels in the government's pandemic response plan.

``We will continue border protection to stop people coming into Australia with swine flu,'' Roxon told reporters in Melbourne. ``This doesn't mean each and every state will be undertaking the same response. It provides us with flexibility for social distancing measures such as school closures.''

Australia has confirmed 11 cases of the virus, 10 of those in the past few days. Roxon said she was concerned that two of the cases appeared in people who had not recently traveled overseas.

http://www.thenews.com.pk/updates.asp?id=78321

 

[Sally Furniss]

Re: Australia raises its swine flu alert level

Re: Australia raises its swine flu alert level

Australia ups H1N1 flu pandemic threat level
Posted: 22 May 2009 1820 hrs


SYDNEY : Australia upped its pandemic threat level on Friday, invoking sweeping powers allowing for the closure of schools, public places and major events as the number of confirmed Influenza A (H1N1) flu cases reached 12.

A 10-year-old girl became the country's first case of human-to-human transmission after contracting the disease from a classmate who fell ill upon returning from a family holiday to the United States.

Two teenagers, one in Melbourne and another in Adelaide, were also diagnosed with the virus without having travelled overseas or come into contact with an identified case, prompting Canberra to escalate its pandemic management plan.

Health Minister Nicola Roxon said the shift to the "containment" phase gave the government greater scope to try to control the spread of the disease.

"It provides us with flexibility for social distancing measures such as school closures, which we have already seen in South Australia and Victoria," Roxon said.

"The contained phase is not the top phase. There are three more levels after that," she added.

The alert level was raised following a meeting of the Australian Public Health Committee, and came as five new cases of the virus were confirmed, including the 10-year-old.

"We do seem to be moving into a new phase of more widespread transmission in Australia," Roxon said.

A 25-year-old man who flew into Melbourne from Los Angeles Tuesday was diagnosed with H1N1 flu, while a 17-year-old boy, also from the southern city, was confirmed to be carrying the virus.

A teenage girl from Adelaide became South Australia state's first confirmed case, and her mother, 40, was late Friday found to be suffering from H1N1 flu, taking the total number of cases to 12.

Her young brother had tested negative but was displaying flu-like symptoms and would be tested again, health officials said.

Both their schools had been shut for a week as a precaution, and classmates had been prescribed the anti-viral drug Tamiflu.

Authorities were trying to ascertain how the Adelaide and Melbourne teens had contracted the disease, Roxon said.

Neither had been overseas or had known contact with identified cases, and intensive tracing of their movements was now under way, she said.

"Clearly these developments overnight are a cause for concern, particularly the first known case of human-to-human transmission and, of course, now two cases... that don't have any history of travel or contact with confirmed cases," Roxon said.

"There is no cause for alarm but we do need to treat this as a serious matter," she added.

More than 11,000 cases and 85 deaths have been recorded since the outbreak of A(H1N1) influenza emerged in Mexico and the United States a month ago, and the world remains at flu alert level five, signalling an "imminent pandemic". - AFP/ms


http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_asiapacific/view/431079/1/.html

 

[Sally Furniss]

Re: Australia raises its swine flu alert level

Re: Australia raises its swine flu alert level

Swine flu is here and spreading by the hour, Health Minister warns

* Julie Robotham and Mark Metherell
* May 23, 2009

THE Federal Government has raised Australia's pandemic alert level after the first evidence swine flu is spreading between people here - a move that signals cancellation of big sporting events, religious rallies and concerts may be just weeks away.

The new "control" phase of the Government's plan for pandemic flu is likely to last one to three months. Then, if the spread of the disease has not already subsided, it is likely to be followed by the higher "sustain" phase, in which "people may be encouraged to avoid mass gatherings and certain events may even be cancelled", according to the plan.

New cases of swine flu can be expected to emerge in Australia every hour, the Government warned after the first two cases emerged in Victoria and South Australia of localised transmission of the virus among individuals who had not travelled overseas.

A total of 13 people in Australia had been confirmed with swine flu by late yesterday, two of them in NSW.

NSW health authorities are still investigating 24 potential cases, as laboratories said they were prepared to process hundreds of samples a day, turning round the results in a matter of hours.

The Health Minister, Nicola Roxon, said that the upgraded alert could mean more widespread school closures and other "social distancing" measures and the possible deployment of the national stockpile of 8 million courses of anti-viral drugs.

In South Australia two schools were closed for a week from yesterday after a second and possibly a third case were identified in that state. About 1000 students will stay home until next Friday, with about 50 year seven students to receive a course of TamiFlu anti-virals.

"Clearly we haven't stopped this disease coming into Australia," Ms Roxon said, so it was appropriate to lift the alert level. "It is important to remember that ? there are still only a small number of confirmed cases in Australia, and the symptoms people are experiencing are relatively mild."

Jeremy McAnulty, the director of the communicable diseases branch of NSW Health, said although the national plan calls for health authorities to consider distributing face masks to front-line health workers at this stage, the measure was not yet warranted. "We don't have sustained transmission in the Australian community. We don't believe [workers] are going to be exposed to it," Dr McAnulty said.

If transmission within the community were to escalate, border screening measures for inbound travellers might be withdrawn, because this would then contribute relatively little to controlling the disease, caused by a new variant of the H1N1 flu virus.

Robert Booy, the head of clinical research at the National Centre for Immunisation Research & Surveillance at the University of Sydney, said the rising number of new cases globally, combined with pressure on the virus to mutate, meant swine flu "could change to the point where it is more novel and particularly more nasty"

http://www.smh.com.au/national/swin...lth-minister-warns-20090522-bia5.html?page=-1

 

[Sally Furniss]

Re: Australia raises its swine flu alert level

Re: Australia raises its swine flu alert level

Rudd defends swine flu threat upgrade

There are now 14 people infected in Australia.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has defended the decision of health authorities to upgrade the threat level of swine flu as the number of confirmed cases continues to increase.
There are now 14 people infected in Australia after a 15-year-old boy from Melbourne's northern suburbs was diagnosed with the H1N1 virus.

The flu alert level has been lifted from "delay" to "contain", giving authorities in all states the option to close schools if students are at risk.

This means schools across Australia have the power to close if they are concerned about students at risk of contracting the virus and Mr Rudd says it is necessary to stop the virus in its tracks.

"This will of course inconvenience in certain communities as certain schools are temporarily closed down," he said.

"We understand that that imposes inconvenience on families.

"However, we also have a responsibility for the public health of the nation and therefore we will take actions are necessary to underpin the public health of the nation even if that involves inconvenience in certain locations."

He says the Government has acted in response to each recommendation put to it by professional health authorities around the country.

Mr Rudd says in some cases that will mean schools have to be closed down temporarily.

"We understand that that imposes inconvenience on families, however we also have a responsibility for the public health of the nation, and therefore we will take whatever actions are necessary to underpin the public health of the nation, even if that involves inconvenience in certain locations," he said.

Australia's chief medical officer, Professor Jim Bishop, says they are investigating how the latest person to develop swine flu caught the virus.

He says the 15-year-old Melbourne boy is one of four infected people who have not had contact with an overseas traveller.

"There would have been a pathway of someone who had travelled," he aid.

"This is a new virus to the continent so it would have come in through that way, remembering this is a very mild illness so a person who has a mild illness may not be febrile and may not have much except a bit of a sniffle."

Professor Bishop says it will be difficult for GPs to distinguish swine flu from the normal flu virus this winter.

"Almost every case they see will be ordinary flu as we think it's (swine flu) a very low load in the community," he said.

"But what we're going to be seeing this year is a lot more testing ... so we can sort of look to see what it looks like in our community through the flu season."

With the exception of a 51-year-old Mexican tourist, all Australia's swine flu cases are younger than 28, and more than half are school-aged children.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/stories/2009/05/23/2579007.htm