14 DAY TRIAL // According to a new estimate released by the United Nations World Health Organization (WHO) on Wednesday, the number of confirmed swine flu cases around the world continues to rise, despite authorities' best efforts to contain the situation. The H1N1 influenza A strain has thus far infected some 10,243 people, and killed almost 80, according to the latest official figures, not containing suspected cases in several countries. Also, the WHO report said that the center of the epidemic had moved from Mexico to the United States, with the largest number of new cases, nearly 5,469, occurring here alone.
The organization also said that it was currently directing all of its research efforts towards making sure that the epidemic was contained, and that a vaccine, or at least some other form of treatment, was found as soon as possible. But, with the disease spreading the way it did, representatives from the international body argued that it might not be a stretch to consider the possibility that a global scale pandemic might break out. Already, the confinement of existing cases has been lost.
One of the main reasons why that happened is the fact that the world is today so inter-connected, that it's virtually impossible to prevent the spread of a highly contagious pathogen unless you nip the spread at ground zero. However, that is nearly impossible, because, for an epidemic to be detected, it has to first affect a significant number of people. And, when that happens, chances are that at least one of those people has already traveled to another country, passing through an airport in the process. From there, the infection can spread virtually anywhere in the world.
Last month, the WHO raised the alertness level to 5 on a scale to 6, and chances are that it will soon declare the swine flu infection a global pandemic. In Japan, another 51 cases have been confirmed, which brings the total number of those in the Asian nations alone to 210. Meeting at the annual WHO conference, experts from around the world discussed strategies of how to counteract the action of the virus, but thus far no concrete solutions have been discovered, Reuters reports.