Friday, July 24, 2009

Global swine flu official death toll doubles in the past month

WHO did not give a breakdown of the deaths Tuesday. But as of last week, the United States reported 263 deaths, Canada reported 45 deaths and Britain had 29. According to WHO's last update on July 6, there were 119 deaths in Mexico.

SHOOT: 700 [official] deaths might not seem like much. H5N1 by comparison took 4 years to reach 400. The actual numbers may seem quite low. of course the danger lies in the POTENTIAL for this to become a very nasty pandemic virus, a killer capable of shaving tens of millions of lives from various countries' populations. In short, it can could have a chronic impact on your life and on your community - and on the economy in your area, and globally - even if you survive.
clipped from www.google.com

GENEVA — The worldwide death toll from swine flu has doubled in the past month, reaching over 700 since the start of the outbreak last spring, the World Health Organization said Tuesday.

The U.N. health agency also said it is examining how countries can tackle the expected explosion in cases predicted this fall, when students and workers in the northern hemisphere return from summer vacation.

Closing schools can help break the chain of swine flu transmission, though at risk of considerable economic cost, the British medical journal The Lancet reported Tuesday. The study is to be published in next month's edition.

"School closures is one of the mitigation measures that could be considered by countries," WHO spokeswoman Aphaluck Bhatiasevi told reporters in Geneva.

WHO stopped asking governments to report infections last week, saying it was "extremely difficult, if not impossible" for countries with large numbers of cases to keep track of each new one.

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