Posted on 04/28/2009 8:19:45 AM PDT by Pinkbell
MEXICO CITY (AP) — The swine flu epidemic crossed new borders Tuesday with the first cases confirmed in the Middle East and the Asia-Pacific region, as world health officials said they suspect American patients may have transmitted the virus to others in the U.S.
Most people confirmed with the new swine flu were infected in Mexico, where the number of deaths blamed on the virus has surpassed 150.
But confirmation that people had become infected outside Mexico would indicate that the disease was spreading beyond travelers returning from the country, World Health Organization spokesman Gregory Hartl told reporters on Tuesday in Geneva.
Hartl said the source of some infections in the United States, Canada and Britain was unclear.
Hartl said WHO was waiting for U.S. authorities to announce that a number of students at a New York high school have passed the virus on to one another after their return from a spring vacation in Mexico. "I think we might have one other instance in the U.S.," he said.
Pressed by reporters to elaborate, he declined, saying it was up to U.S. authorities to provide further information.
Possible scenarios include students getting infected who did not travel to Mexico, or students who traveled there but became infected only after returning to the United States, or family members getting infected from returning students.
WHO calls this "community transmission" and says it's a key test for gauging whether the spread of the virus has reached pandemic proportions. The swine flu has already spread to at least six countries besides Mexico, prompting WHO officials to raise its alert level on Monday.
"At this time, containment is not a feasible option," said Keiji Fukuda, assistant director-general of the World Health Organization.
(Excerpt) Read more at broadband.zoomtown.com ...
Mexico, where the number of deaths believed caused by swine flu rose by 50 percent on Monday to 152, is suspected to be the center of the outbreak. But Mexican Health Secretary Jose Angel Cordova late Monday said no one knows where the outbreak began, and implied it may have started in the U.S.
"I think it is very risky to say, or want to say, what the point of origin or dissemination of it is, given that there had already been cases reported in southern California and Texas," Cordova told a press conference.
Yeah, we have a corrupt, poverty-stricken nation, trying to say that the nation next door with the high standard of living started this miserable pig virus.
Riiiiiight....
ROFL - A genuine No S/Sherlock moment!
Hell - the next thing the Government will discover is that people with HIV are infecting others.
Dirty Americans. Time to adopt superiour Mexican hygenic habits.
Wow. An infectuous virus. Who da thunk it?
Don’t worry, Obama will apologize for it very soon...
They went out of their way to say Americans are infecting other Americans and not ILLEGALS or MEXICANS are infecting Americans.
Excellent.
It’s called liberal logic. It doesn’t make sense, but they do it all the time.
Nothing new except the same old blame America for everything crowd is back on message.
http://www.coughsafe.com/media.html
This video has been passed around at work. The the tongue in cheek humor ahhhh make it nose in sleeve humor makes it popular.
Did the W. H. O. think that this wasn’t going to spread outside the U.S.? It almost sounds as if they’re now trying to blame the U.S. if this gets any bigger. Where was the blame on Mexico for being the birth place of this? We couldn’t stop it at our border on the way in, so why should we be able to stop it on the way out?
People can be non symptomatic on the flight out, then have an onset of symptoms. So how do you stop the spreading of this virus?
There are morons a plenty in places of leadership these days.
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