Troubling signs on swine flu in Britain and Mexico
LONDON - Britain faces a projected 100,000 new swine flu cases a day by the end of August, the nation's health minister said yesterday, and the virus is showing signs of rebounding in Mexico.
Britain has officially reported 7,447 swine flu cases and three deaths, but officials acknowledge the real number of cases is far higher, since many have not been tested.
Britain is the hardest-hit nation in Europe amid the global swine flu epidemic. Many flu experts believe numbers could jump exponentially now that the virus is entrenched. Few people have natural immunity, allowing it to spread rapidly.
The World Health Organization's director-general, Margaret Chan, and health ministers from around the globe met yesterday in Cancun, Mexico, for a two-day summit to design strategies against the pandemic.
Mexican officials wanted the meeting held in the Caribbean resort city - where tourism has plunged - to highlight the country's success in controlling its epidemic with a five-day shutdown of businesses and schools in May.
But Mexico is starting to see an increase in infections in isolated areas. In southern Chiapas state and the state of Yucatan - adjacent to Quintana Roo state, where Cancun is located - cases have more than doubled in a worrying sign that the country may experience a resurgence, especially when its winter flu season begins in November.
Britain, meanwhile, has been reporting several hundred infections a day.
"Cases are doubling every week, and on this trend we could see over 100,000 cases per day by the end of August," Health Minister Andy Burnham told the House of Commons yesterday. That could mean six million people, or 10 percent of the population, infected by the fall.
Other experts wondered how Burnham came up with the 100,000 prediction.
"It seems like a lot of mathematical modeling and not too much common sense," said John Oxford, a professor of virology at St. Bart's and Royal London Hospital.
Britain had been trying to contain the disease by liberally giving out the drug Tamiflu to all suspected swine flu cases and their contacts, a strategy that some other countries tried and quickly abandoned.
Burnham said Britain would now give the drug only to people believed to have the virus.
