GENEVA — Health experts are looking closely at the spread of swine flu among people in Spain, Britain and Japan, a WHO official said Sunday as Japan reported a one-day explosion of more than 70 new cases, mostly among teenagers.
The swine flu epidemic is already expected to dominate the World Health Organization's annual meeting, a five-day event that begins today in Geneva and involves health officials from the agency's 193 member states.
WHO Director-General Dr. Margaret Chan will reveal experts' recommendations on production of a swine flu vaccine at the meeting. Pharmaceutical companies are ready to begin production, but many decisions have to be made first – such as how much vaccine to make, how it should be distributed and who should get it.
Some experts say there's no question that a swine flu vaccine must be produced but WHO needs to discuss the issue with its members.
As of Sunday, the swine flu virus has sickened at least 8,480 people in 39 countries, killing 75 of them, mostly in Mexico.
Japan's health ministry confirmed dozens of new cases of swine flu in waves of announcements Sunday, prompting the government to shut down schools and cancel public events such as Kobe's annual festival. By late Sunday, Japan's tally rose from five confirmed cases to 78 – many of them high school students who had not traveled overseas.
Most new cases involved students in the western prefectures of Hyogo and Osaka, and health officials said they were recovering in local hospitals or at home.
Customer service workers at stores, restaurants and train stations in those two regions immediately began wearing masks as a precaution.
Japan had established strict quarantines at airports, but decided Saturday to focus on containing the domestic outbreak.
WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl said in-country transmission rates were a key factor in whether the global body decides to increase its pandemic alert level. Right now, the world is at phase 5 – out of a possible 6 – meaning that a global outbreak is "imminent."
"We already know about the UK and Spain, that they have a relatively high number of cases compared to other European countries, so by simple virtue of the fact that they have more cases they need to be kept an eye on," Hartl said in an interview with AP Television News. "There seems to have been activity in the last few days in Japan so we need to watch that, too."
Spain and Britain have had the highest numbers of cases in Europe, reporting 103 and 101 cases, respectively. Britain announced 14 new cases Sunday.
A pandemic could be triggered if the virus starts to be transmitted from person to person on a large scale outside the Americas, WHO experts said.
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