Bogota: A 42-year-old man who recently returned from Mexico and lives near the Colombian capital Bogota is Colombia's first case of swine flu, health officials confirmed on Sunday.
"Last night, the Colombian government was notified by the CDC (US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention) that one of the 18 samples sent for testing was positive for the H1N1 virus," Colombian Health Minister Diego Palacio told
reporters.
The result makes Colombia the 18th country to confirm a case of the virus.
Health authorities in Colombia have detected 108 suspected cases of the virus in 216 patients with flu-like symptoms, Palacio said.
Of the suspected cases, four were hospitalized.
Palacio declined to name the confirmed victim "in order to prevent him, his family and his home city (Zipaquira) from being stigmatized.
"He received all necessary medical attention and we have taken every step to control the situation," the minister said.
"This should not be cause for alarm," he stressed, but added it was likely only the first case of several to be found.
Meanwhile from Washington, there has been confirmation that the swine flu virus spread to 30 US states on Sunday with a total of 226 confirmed cases, the Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said.
Health officials cautioned that the rise in cases had more to do with increased and better reporting of test results than a rapid spread of the virus.
While Mexico, which is the epicentre of the outbreak, claimed the virus was "declining" the World Health Organization (WHO) said the virus could return and the world might even witness a surge in the spring.
US Health Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, appearing on CNN's State of the Union programme on Sunday, warned that even if the outbreak wanes, "it could come back with greater force in the winter and fall, when we get into flu season."
"So, this is no time for complacency," she said. "We want to stay out ahead of this."
WHO rejected an assertion by the CDC that the mutated swine flu virus A/H1N1 did not appear to have the same deadly power as the Spanish influenza virus of 1918 that killed more than 25 million people.
WHO director Michael Ryan, in countering this assertion, said that "these viruses are very unpredictable" and that it could still turn out that the swine flu could develop into a pandemic.
Ryan said that the WHO still had to assume that alarm level 6 - that of a pandemic - would be reached. At the moment, WHO has an alert status of 5.
"We have to suspect that phase 6 is reached but we have to hope that it is not reached," he said, while also noting, "at this stage it would be unwise to suggest or to say it was spreading in an uncontrolled fashion."
The US has 50 million doses of anti-viral medicine, has distributed about a quarter to 19 states with confirmed cases, and ordered 13 million more to replace them, officials said.
The individual US states have an additional 23 million doses on hand, and the federal government was sending 400,000 doses to Mexico.
Comments
0 comment