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Swine Flu at Level 6 - Pandemic The World Health Organization today said it was getting closer to officially declaring a Swine Flu Pandemic Level 6 and level six is the highest level you can get, reflecting the global spread of the type A H1N1 Virus. So it’ll be a pandemic, meaning it’s now everywhere, but the new strain of flu virus itself is proving to be a lot less severe for sufferers of swine flu symptoms. The percentage of deaths is remarkably low for a completely new strain. The WHO’s six phase system for declaring a pandemic focuses on how widespread the disease is, not how dangerous. The organization’s flu chief says the disease has reached 64 countries and infected nearly 19,000 people, so it’s well on the way to becoming endemic everywhere. The danger then, is of the new virus mutating further into a strain that is more deadly than that currently spreading. While the overwhelming majority of cases have been reported in Mexico and the US, the swine flu is increasingly spreading from person to person all over the globe, causing more than 100 deaths worldwide. The WHO calls the situation “moderate” rather than “mild” while some experts have reported patients with symptoms different from those expected and the virus is causing severe infections in some healthy, young adults. A worrying sign. What is a Pandemic Level 6?

Phase 1: virus discovered in animals but not infecting humans. Phase 2: Animal influenza virus known to have spread to a human, indicating a potential threat. Phase 3: Sporadic cases or small clusters of influenza disease in people, no sustained human-to-human transmission. The virus has not yet reached a level of transmissibility among humans to cause a pandemic. Phase 4: Verified human-to-human transmission with “community-level outbreaks”. This marks an increased risk of pandemic, but not yet inevitable. Phase 6: Pandemic phase. Community level outbreaks in at least two countries in different WHO regions, on top of level 5. A global pandemic is now under way, and probably has been for some time already.

Swine Flu has been spreading geometrically from human to human in both North America and Japan in Asia for more about two weeks so why is the WHO still waiting to declare a level 6 pandemic? Well, at a World Health Organization meeting on May 18th, 2009, several countries urged the agency to use great caution in deciding whether or when to declare a full-scale pandemic. UK Government Health Minister Alan Johnson was the leading voice for caution, according to press reports from that meeting. He warned that moving to phase 6 could unnecessarily trigger costly and risky actions such as switching from production of seasonal flu vaccine to pandemic vaccine, even though the virus so far seems mild. Johnson said a pandemic declaration should also reflect the severity of the disease, not just its geographic extent, thus changing the agreed protocol designed exactly for such a situation. ”It’s very important that that’s reflected in your ability as to whether to move from 5 to 6,” he said. “So I would like to propose that you have more flexibility in that rather than follow a mechanistic process.” Johnson was backed by New Zealand, Switzerland, and the head of the Pan American Health Organization, according to reports.

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