Swine flu cases expected to rise

Canadian health officials expected more cases of swine flu to be confirmed Monday, while the disease has killed more than 100 in Mexico and the European Union warned travellers to think twice about heading to the Americas. Canadian authorities reported six “mild” cases of swine flu on Sunday — the first confirmed cases in Canada since an outbreak of the illness began in Mexico several days ago — and warned there could be more cases in the days ahead.
The Mexican government confirmed Monday that 103 lives had been claimed by the infectious respiratory disease, and about 20 people in the United States had fallen ill.

Meanwhile, a case was confirmed in_Spain and reports of the disease came from as far afield as New Zealand, prompting the World Health Organization to activate its 24-hour “war-room” command centre.

The European Union issued a statement Monday urging against non-essential travel to Mexico and the U.S.

In Canada, Air Canada and WestJet offered would-be travellers to Mexico refunds on any plane tickets purchased to the country of about 100,000 millions people.

Nova Scotia health officials said two of the four victims in that province, all students at the same private school, recently visited Mexico. Two cases also were confirmed in British Columbia.

None of the people in Canada has been hospitalized.

The Canadian cases “have thankfully been relatively mild and the patients are recovering,” said Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq, who warned “as we continue to ramp up our surveillance efforts these cases are likely not the last we’ll see in Canada.”

Aglukkaq said health officials were “following plans and protocols prepared in advance for events like this.”

“To have our first confirmed cases is of course, troubling,” said David Butler-Jones, Canada’s chief public health officer, adding that while the symptoms in Canada were ‘mild,’ Canadians had to practice good basic flu-prevention techniques, to lower risks of infection.

Health officials said Washington’s decisions to declare a public health emergency did not suggest people were in greater danger but that the declaration was part of a normal course of action to facilitate state and federal response.

“At this point, we are not seeing severe cases like we are in Mexico,” said Dr. Robert Strang, chief public health officer for Nova Scotia, where four cases were confirmed.

Joe Seagram, the headmaster of the private school in Windsor, N.S., said 21 people were in isolation, 17 students and four staff. They are being isolated for seven days as a precaution.

“All those who had the flu are recovering either at home or in the dormitory,” said Strang.

Dr. Gaynor Watson-Creed, medical officer of health for the Capital District Health Authority in Nova Scotia, said health officials are closely monitoring the other students at the school.

“One of the challenges with this illness is that it has been so mild that many of the students can’t really tell how sick they are,” she said, adding that most of the children just had a cough and fatigue. There may be many more children who had the virus and didn’t report they were sick because they felt fine, she said.

While some people at the school were wearing face masks over the weekend, Strang said wearing protective covering had not been recommended by health authorities.

Dr. Danuta Skowronski, a spokeswoman for the BC Centre for Disease Control, said the two people with mild cases of swine flu were in the greater Vancouver area and had recently travelled to Mexico.

Doctors aren’t sure why the illness has been so deadly in Mexico and mild in other countries, said Skowronski.

About two-thirds of the 1,300 people in Mexico who were suspected of having swine flu were given a clean bill of health and sent home from hospital, according to Mexican President Felipe Calderon.

He said more than 900 people had been declared healthy and nearly 400 others with flu-like symptoms were in hospitals being checked.

Calderon reassured Mexicans on Sunday that the flu is curable with drugs and said Mexico has ample stocks of antiviral medicine.

Officials from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said Sunday that they expected fatalities from swine flu in the United States.

However, the CDC’s acting director, Dr. Richard Besser, told a White House briefing that “if you do not have symptoms you should not get tested” by a doctor.

The new flu strain, a mixture of various swine, bird and human viruses, poses the biggest risk of a large-scale pandemic since avian flu surfaced in 1997, killing several hundred people.