Mexico City (AP): Mexico's top health official said the number of new
swine flu cases is stabilising in the nation at the epicentre of the outbreak.
Health Secretary Jose Angel Cordova told a news conference he hoped the trend
will continue and that a vaccine would be available in six months. European
health ministers said they would speed efforts to develop such a vaccine.
The World Health Organization's flu chief, reacting to similar comments from
other Mexican officials, cautioned that case numbers often go up and down, and
said the WHO had yet to see concrete evidence that swine flu, believed to have
killed 168 people in Mexico, was levelling off. "What's happening in one part of
the country is not necessarily what's happening in another part of the country."
New cases of swine flu were confirmed in the United States and Europe a day
after the WHO said the virus threatened to become a global epidemic and raised
its alert level to Phase 5, the second-highest stage, for the first time.
Health officials in the United States said on Thursday the number of confirmed
cases had risen to 109.
President Barack Obama told Americans the government was "taking the utmost
precautions and preparations" to stop the virus.
