http://www.calgaryherald.com/Health/long+incubation+period+says/1561558/story.html
OTTAWA ? Human swine flu appears to have a longer than normal incubation period, causes diarrhea in about half of those it infects and can lead to severe pneumonia and deaths in young, healthy people, the World Health Organization said Monday.
But what is still not known is how often H1N1 influenza A leads to severe disease.
"I think that right now we do know that some of the people who have died have been young and healthy. But we also know that some of the people who have died have also had other illnesses going along," Dr. Keiji Fukuda, the WHO's temporary assistant director-general for Health Security and the Environment, told reporters.
Three new cases of swine flu were reported in Canada Monday, two in Prince Edward Island and one in New Brunswick, bringing Canada's total to 104. WHO said the number of global cases stands at 1,025 from 20 countries, including 26 deaths.
The New Brunswick case, the province's second, involved a woman in her 40s from the Fredericton area who has already recovered. Both cases in PEI were mild, according to the PEI Department of Health. Neither case was hospitalized.
The new H1N1 swine flu has now infected 286 people in 36 states, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Monday.
CDC officials have said they expect to see more cases as the flu spreads across the country. Most cases remain mild but a toddler, who was from Mexico, died in Texas last week. In Mexico officials say they hope cases will continue to decline.
Globally, the largest number of cases have been reported in North America, from Mexico, the U.S. and Canada, though the virus appears to be on the move, with infections occurring in Asia, Europe and Latin America.
But Fukuda says, "we do not have any evidence that the virus has taken hold and led to community-level transmission in any other countries right now."
The World Health Organization is one step away from calling the swine flu outbreaks a pandemic. Last week it raised its alert level to phase five on a six-phase scale. The change was meant as a signal that a pandemic is likely imminent and that countries should activate their pandemic preparedness plans.
"We are not certain when we will go to phase 6," Fukuda said. "There's not a timetable. There's no timetable for how viruses like this spread out."
But even then, going to phase 6 doesn't say anything about the severity of the disease.
"Phase 6 means that we are seeing continued spread of the virus to countries outside of one region," Fukuda said. "If you are seeing community outbreaks occur in multiple regions of the world it really tells us that the virus has established itself and that we can expect to see disease in most countries in the world."
That's different than the severity of the pandemic.
"Severity has to do with when people get infected, how often are they going to develop really severe disease? Will we see younger people develop serious disease more often than usual? Will there be anything unusual about pregnant women? Will there be anything unusual about children? These are the kinds of things we would be looking at in order to determine severity."
Twenty five Universite de Montreal students, in China to study Mandarin, and their teacher have been placed under quarantine in northern China for seven days as a precaution against swine flu.
Provincial health authorities stopped the group yesterday upon their arrival in Changchun airport in the province of Jilin. They had their temperatures taken at the airport and then bused to a
university dormitory. None of the students are reported to have fever.
Twenty countries worldwide had banned imports of pork as of Monday in response to the discovery of the new H1N1 flu strain in a herd of pigs on a central Alberta hog farm.
While the new H1N1 strain is not food-borne, fears that it may spread through animal products have prompted restrictions on live pigs, pork, cattle, poultry, livestock, feed and animal semen from countries with reported infections, according to World Health Organization documents obtained by Reuters on Monday.
"We are very clear that pork and pork products when they're handled right and when they're cooked properly do not pose a risk of infection to people," Fukuda says. "Here, we are dealing with a situation where the people who are getting infected are not getting infected from pigs.
"However, we also want to be careful and make sure there is no risk and so this is something we would continue to look at whether pigs may pose a risk to some people. But this is really not how people are getting infected and this is very important to understand. The pigs are not the danger to people right now. The danger is from people transmitting the infection to other people and this is what we hope to control as much as possible."
Health Canada is warning consumers to be wary against counterfeit and unapproved products, from dietary supplements and flu "detoxes" to bogus vaccines, that have flooded the Internet claiming to help diagnose, prevent or cure human swine flu.
The drugs could contain active ingredients not listed on the label and could cause serious side effects, the health agency says.
Some claim to be "generic" versions of the flu drugs, Tamiflu or Relenza ? drugs that should only be purchased with a prescription from a doctor and used only if the person is sick with moderate to severe flu or is at high risk of flu-related complications, officials say.
Federal officials believe the infected pigs on the central Alberta hog farm ? the first known case of humans transferring the new strain into animals ? contracted the virus from a Canadian worker who returned from Mexico on April 12 and arrived on the farm two days later, showing flu symptoms shortly thereafter. One other person on the farm has had mild symptoms. Officials are awaiting test results.
Both the worker and the approximately 220 infected pigs are recovering, but the animals have been quarantined, say officials.
The countries that have imposed bans include Russia, China, Switzerland, Croatia, Indonesia, Thailand and Ecuador.
Most affect products from Mexico and the United States and some block imports from Canada, New Zealand, Spain, France, Israel, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Colombia, Cuba, Nicaragua, Panama, Honduras, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic.
Global trade in pork meat is worth about $26 billion a year.
The three countries most affected by the bans announced to date ? Mexico, the United States and Canada ? are among the world's top pork exporters, along with the European Union, Brazil, Chile, China and Hong Kong.
WHO chief Margaret Chan said there was "no indication that we are facing a situation similar to that in 1918," when a flu pandemic killed tens of millions.
The WHO continues to say consumption of pork is safe and said there are no plans to put down any of the infected animals.
WHO Dr. Peter Ben Embarek said there are no recommendations to cull any pigs.
Canadian officials also urged consumers not be concerned about the virus entering the food chain.
Dr. Brian Evans, executive vice-president of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and Canada's chief veterinary officer, stressed there was no food-safety concern and said consumption of pork is not considered a route of transmission to humans.
Dr. Ho Pak-leung, associate professor at University of Hong Kong's microbiology department, is concerned the transmission of the flu virus from humans to pigs indicates a new medium of transmission for the virus.
Ho says he believes this H1N1 flu virus will become increasingly difficult to control if more pigs are infected by this human swine flu virus. There's also a high risk the virus can mutate inside infected pigs, creating new strains of the animal flu, he said.
The transfer of a flu virus from humans to pigs is not unheard of, he says, pointing out the influenza viruses of the Hong Kong flu pandemic also transferred from humans to pigs, and vice versa. That pandemic killed nearly one million people in 1968 and 1969.
"Once the human virus is transmitted to pigs, anyone that comes in contact with infected pigs will have chance of contracting this (H1N1) virus," he says.
There's also a high risk the virus can mutate inside infected pigs, Ho adds, creating new strains of the animal flu.
"A single pig can be infected with different influenza viruses," he says. "So, there's a chance that the genes of the influenza virus may 'shuffle' inside the pigs . . . forming a new virus."
However, Ho stresses that pork products are safe to eat, since the H1N1 disease cannot be contracted from eating cooked pork, as the flu virus is killed at temperatures of 70 C.
Meanwhile, China says it is not targeting Mexican citizens in its stepped-up bid to keep H1N1 flu off the Mainland, but a skeptical Mexican government dispatched an airplane Monday to take its sequestered nationals home, anyway.
There are now several reports that Mexicans, with no exposure to the flu or flu victims, are being quarantined in China on the basis of their passports.
The Mexican ambassador in Beijing, Jorge Guajardo, told journalists: "In many cases we have gotten reports that they were being quarantined for the sole fact that they had a Mexican passport, whether or not they came from Mexico, whether or not they had been in Mexico, whether or not they had been in contact with someone else from Mexico."
The Chinese Foreign Ministry was quick to respond.
"The measures concerned are not targeted at Mexican citizens and there is no discrimination," Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said in a statement. "This is purely a medical quarantine issue," Ma said. "Those measures were not targeting Mexican citizens. There is no discrimination. This was purely a medical quarantine issue."
Some 70 Mexican citizens are now quarantined across Mainland China, according to Mexican embassy officials. Many of them had no connection with the AeroMexico airline passenger flight that transited through Shanghai to Hong Kong last Thursday. Once in Hong Kong, one passenger from the flight tested positive for the flu virus and now all passengers and crew are under quarantine in Hong Kong or on the Mainland.
But the Mexican embassy, backed up by Internet reports and news reports, claim Chinese officials have been isolating Mexican citizens on other flights, as well, and putting them in quarantine, even when they have no immediate history of exposure in Mexico or to the flu virus.
China was quick to suspend all flights to Mexico but over the weekend announced it would send a special flight Monday to rescue any of its citizens stranded in the holiday hot spot. On Monday, however, it said the flight was cancelled because "the airline was unable to reach a landing agreement with Mexican airports."
It smacked of an escalating diplomatic spat, but late in the day tempers appeared to cool and the two sides said arrangements were being made to repatriate nationals from both countries.
OTTAWA ? Human swine flu appears to have a longer than normal incubation period, causes diarrhea in about half of those it infects and can lead to severe pneumonia and deaths in young, healthy people, the World Health Organization said Monday.
But what is still not known is how often H1N1 influenza A leads to severe disease.
"I think that right now we do know that some of the people who have died have been young and healthy. But we also know that some of the people who have died have also had other illnesses going along," Dr. Keiji Fukuda, the WHO's temporary assistant director-general for Health Security and the Environment, told reporters.
Three new cases of swine flu were reported in Canada Monday, two in Prince Edward Island and one in New Brunswick, bringing Canada's total to 104. WHO said the number of global cases stands at 1,025 from 20 countries, including 26 deaths.
The New Brunswick case, the province's second, involved a woman in her 40s from the Fredericton area who has already recovered. Both cases in PEI were mild, according to the PEI Department of Health. Neither case was hospitalized.
The new H1N1 swine flu has now infected 286 people in 36 states, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Monday.
CDC officials have said they expect to see more cases as the flu spreads across the country. Most cases remain mild but a toddler, who was from Mexico, died in Texas last week. In Mexico officials say they hope cases will continue to decline.
Globally, the largest number of cases have been reported in North America, from Mexico, the U.S. and Canada, though the virus appears to be on the move, with infections occurring in Asia, Europe and Latin America.
But Fukuda says, "we do not have any evidence that the virus has taken hold and led to community-level transmission in any other countries right now."
The World Health Organization is one step away from calling the swine flu outbreaks a pandemic. Last week it raised its alert level to phase five on a six-phase scale. The change was meant as a signal that a pandemic is likely imminent and that countries should activate their pandemic preparedness plans.
"We are not certain when we will go to phase 6," Fukuda said. "There's not a timetable. There's no timetable for how viruses like this spread out."
But even then, going to phase 6 doesn't say anything about the severity of the disease.
"Phase 6 means that we are seeing continued spread of the virus to countries outside of one region," Fukuda said. "If you are seeing community outbreaks occur in multiple regions of the world it really tells us that the virus has established itself and that we can expect to see disease in most countries in the world."
That's different than the severity of the pandemic.
"Severity has to do with when people get infected, how often are they going to develop really severe disease? Will we see younger people develop serious disease more often than usual? Will there be anything unusual about pregnant women? Will there be anything unusual about children? These are the kinds of things we would be looking at in order to determine severity."
Twenty five Universite de Montreal students, in China to study Mandarin, and their teacher have been placed under quarantine in northern China for seven days as a precaution against swine flu.
Provincial health authorities stopped the group yesterday upon their arrival in Changchun airport in the province of Jilin. They had their temperatures taken at the airport and then bused to a
university dormitory. None of the students are reported to have fever.
Twenty countries worldwide had banned imports of pork as of Monday in response to the discovery of the new H1N1 flu strain in a herd of pigs on a central Alberta hog farm.
While the new H1N1 strain is not food-borne, fears that it may spread through animal products have prompted restrictions on live pigs, pork, cattle, poultry, livestock, feed and animal semen from countries with reported infections, according to World Health Organization documents obtained by Reuters on Monday.
"We are very clear that pork and pork products when they're handled right and when they're cooked properly do not pose a risk of infection to people," Fukuda says. "Here, we are dealing with a situation where the people who are getting infected are not getting infected from pigs.
"However, we also want to be careful and make sure there is no risk and so this is something we would continue to look at whether pigs may pose a risk to some people. But this is really not how people are getting infected and this is very important to understand. The pigs are not the danger to people right now. The danger is from people transmitting the infection to other people and this is what we hope to control as much as possible."
Health Canada is warning consumers to be wary against counterfeit and unapproved products, from dietary supplements and flu "detoxes" to bogus vaccines, that have flooded the Internet claiming to help diagnose, prevent or cure human swine flu.
The drugs could contain active ingredients not listed on the label and could cause serious side effects, the health agency says.
Some claim to be "generic" versions of the flu drugs, Tamiflu or Relenza ? drugs that should only be purchased with a prescription from a doctor and used only if the person is sick with moderate to severe flu or is at high risk of flu-related complications, officials say.
Federal officials believe the infected pigs on the central Alberta hog farm ? the first known case of humans transferring the new strain into animals ? contracted the virus from a Canadian worker who returned from Mexico on April 12 and arrived on the farm two days later, showing flu symptoms shortly thereafter. One other person on the farm has had mild symptoms. Officials are awaiting test results.
Both the worker and the approximately 220 infected pigs are recovering, but the animals have been quarantined, say officials.
The countries that have imposed bans include Russia, China, Switzerland, Croatia, Indonesia, Thailand and Ecuador.
Most affect products from Mexico and the United States and some block imports from Canada, New Zealand, Spain, France, Israel, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Colombia, Cuba, Nicaragua, Panama, Honduras, Guatemala and the Dominican Republic.
Global trade in pork meat is worth about $26 billion a year.
The three countries most affected by the bans announced to date ? Mexico, the United States and Canada ? are among the world's top pork exporters, along with the European Union, Brazil, Chile, China and Hong Kong.
WHO chief Margaret Chan said there was "no indication that we are facing a situation similar to that in 1918," when a flu pandemic killed tens of millions.
The WHO continues to say consumption of pork is safe and said there are no plans to put down any of the infected animals.
WHO Dr. Peter Ben Embarek said there are no recommendations to cull any pigs.
Canadian officials also urged consumers not be concerned about the virus entering the food chain.
Dr. Brian Evans, executive vice-president of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency and Canada's chief veterinary officer, stressed there was no food-safety concern and said consumption of pork is not considered a route of transmission to humans.
Dr. Ho Pak-leung, associate professor at University of Hong Kong's microbiology department, is concerned the transmission of the flu virus from humans to pigs indicates a new medium of transmission for the virus.
Ho says he believes this H1N1 flu virus will become increasingly difficult to control if more pigs are infected by this human swine flu virus. There's also a high risk the virus can mutate inside infected pigs, creating new strains of the animal flu, he said.
The transfer of a flu virus from humans to pigs is not unheard of, he says, pointing out the influenza viruses of the Hong Kong flu pandemic also transferred from humans to pigs, and vice versa. That pandemic killed nearly one million people in 1968 and 1969.
"Once the human virus is transmitted to pigs, anyone that comes in contact with infected pigs will have chance of contracting this (H1N1) virus," he says.
There's also a high risk the virus can mutate inside infected pigs, Ho adds, creating new strains of the animal flu.
"A single pig can be infected with different influenza viruses," he says. "So, there's a chance that the genes of the influenza virus may 'shuffle' inside the pigs . . . forming a new virus."
However, Ho stresses that pork products are safe to eat, since the H1N1 disease cannot be contracted from eating cooked pork, as the flu virus is killed at temperatures of 70 C.
Meanwhile, China says it is not targeting Mexican citizens in its stepped-up bid to keep H1N1 flu off the Mainland, but a skeptical Mexican government dispatched an airplane Monday to take its sequestered nationals home, anyway.
There are now several reports that Mexicans, with no exposure to the flu or flu victims, are being quarantined in China on the basis of their passports.
The Mexican ambassador in Beijing, Jorge Guajardo, told journalists: "In many cases we have gotten reports that they were being quarantined for the sole fact that they had a Mexican passport, whether or not they came from Mexico, whether or not they had been in Mexico, whether or not they had been in contact with someone else from Mexico."
The Chinese Foreign Ministry was quick to respond.
"The measures concerned are not targeted at Mexican citizens and there is no discrimination," Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said in a statement. "This is purely a medical quarantine issue," Ma said. "Those measures were not targeting Mexican citizens. There is no discrimination. This was purely a medical quarantine issue."
Some 70 Mexican citizens are now quarantined across Mainland China, according to Mexican embassy officials. Many of them had no connection with the AeroMexico airline passenger flight that transited through Shanghai to Hong Kong last Thursday. Once in Hong Kong, one passenger from the flight tested positive for the flu virus and now all passengers and crew are under quarantine in Hong Kong or on the Mainland.
But the Mexican embassy, backed up by Internet reports and news reports, claim Chinese officials have been isolating Mexican citizens on other flights, as well, and putting them in quarantine, even when they have no immediate history of exposure in Mexico or to the flu virus.
China was quick to suspend all flights to Mexico but over the weekend announced it would send a special flight Monday to rescue any of its citizens stranded in the holiday hot spot. On Monday, however, it said the flight was cancelled because "the airline was unable to reach a landing agreement with Mexican airports."
It smacked of an escalating diplomatic spat, but late in the day tempers appeared to cool and the two sides said arrangements were being made to repatriate nationals from both countries.
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