Swine Flu – WHO Raises Pandemic Alert Level To 4

The World Health Organization has raised the pandemic alert level to 4 due to the swine flu outbreak, the highest since the scale was developed in 2005.

Read the announcement.

The scale has six phases, with 4 through 6 being the most serious:

• Phase 4 is characterized by verified human-to-human transmission of an animal or human-animal influenza reassortant virus able to cause “community-level outbreaks.”

The ability to cause sustained disease outbreaks in a community marks a significant upwards shift in the risk for a pandemic. Any country that suspects or has verified such an event should urgently consult with WHO so that the situation can be jointly assessed and a decision made by the affected country if implementation of a rapid pandemic containment operation is warranted. Phase 4 indicates a significant increase in risk of a pandemic but does not necessarily mean that a pandemic is a forgone conclusion.

• Phase 5 is characterized by human-to-human spread of the virus into at least two countries in one WHO region. While most countries will not be affected at this stage, the declaration of Phase 5 is a strong signal that a pandemic is imminent and that the time to finalize the organization, communication, and implementation of the planned mitigation measures is short.

• Phase 6, the pandemic phase, is characterized by community level outbreaks in at least one other country in a different WHO region in addition to the criteria defined in Phase 5. Designation of this phase will indicate that a global pandemic is under way.

The latest WHO updates can be found here.

The Obama administration is already responding as if the outbreak were a pandemic, Janet Napolitano, head of the Homeland Security Department, told reporters earlier.

“We want to make sure that we have people where they need to be, equipment where it needs to be and, most of all, information shared at all levels,” she said. “We are proceeding as if we are preparing to a full pandemic,” she said.

Travel warnings to Mexico would remain in effect as long as swine flu is detected, she added.

Source

Swine Flu News Updates

Terrorists Could Use Insect-based Biological Terror Weapon

Terrorists would find it “relatively easy” to launch a devastating attack using swarms of insects to spread a deadly disease, an academic has warned.

Jeffrey Lockwood, professor of entomology at Wyoming University and author of Six-legged Soldiers: Using Insects as Weapons of War, said such Rift Valley Fever or other diseases could be transported into a country by a terrorist with a suitcase.

Lockwood said, “I think a small terrorist cell could very easily develop an insect-based weapon.”

He said it would “probably be much easier” than developing a nuclear or chemical weapon, arguing: “The raw material is in the back yard.”

He continued: “It would be a relatively easy and simple process.

“A few hundred dollars and a plane ticket and you could have a pretty good stab at it.”

Governments, he advised, needed to have robust “pest management infrastructure that’s able to absorb and respond to an introduction” of infected insects, he said.

Trying to stop everything coming in at the border would not work, he said.

Rift Valley Fever is an east African disease which “can cause severe disease in both animals and humans, leading to high rates of disease and death” according to the World Health Organisation.

However, WHO says that “the vast majority of human infections result from direct or indirect contact with the blood or organs of infected animals.”

Source – Telegraph.