Mexico was approved for $3 billion in international loans to fight the swine flu crisis, as the country began a five-day shutdown on Friday to try to halt the spread of the virus. As nations worldwide stepped up safety measures following a World Health Organization, or WHO, warning that a global pandemic may be imminent, Mexican officials said the rapid spread of the H1N1 virus could be slowing, reported Agence France-Presse.

But Mexico’s chief epidemiologist accused the WHO of being slow to respond to the country’s warning about a health crisis that turned into a global swine flu scare. He called for an investigation.Dr. Miguel Angel Lezana told The Associated Press late Thursday that his center alerted the Pan American Health Organization on April 16 about alarming occurrences of flu and atypical pneumonia in Mexico. But no action was taken until eight days later when the World Health Organization said it was “very, very concerned” the outbreak could grow into a pandemic.

“It seems it should have been more immediate,” Lezana, director of the National Epidemiology Center, told AP in a telephone interview.

13 confirmed cases

WHO officials said Friday the health body had been informed on about April 9 of unusual cases of “suspicious influenza” from Mexico that had begun in late March, but that U.S. and Canadian laboratories identified the virus on April 24, when the organization responded rapidly. Health authorities said they have confirmed 300 swine flu cases and 12 deaths due to the virus. Worldwide, 13 countries have confirmed cases. The latest were Denmark and Hong Kong – where a traveler from Mexico accounted for the first verified case on the Asian continent. Canada, New Zealand, Britain, Germany, Spain, Switzerland, the Netherlands, Israel and Austria also have confirmed cases.

Across Mexico’s border, the number of confirmed swine flu cases in the United States rose to 130 Thursday. Hundreds of schools shut their doors. The only confirmed U.S. swine flu death so far was a Mexican toddler who succumbed in Texas. The swine flu outbreak penetrated over a dozen states and even touched the White House, which disclosed that an aide to Energy Secretary Steven Chu apparently got sick helping arrange President Barack Obama’s recent trip to Mexico but that the aide did not fly on Air Force One and never posed a risk to the president. The Washington Post identified the aide as Marc Griswold, a former Secret Service agent who was doing advance work for Chu. It said that Griswold has complained about the infection placing his family in an awkward position with family and neighbors.

U.S. authorities were pledging to eventually produce enough swine flu vaccine for everyone who needs it but the shots couldn’t begin until fall at the earliest. The U.S. swine flu caseload passed 100, and nearly 300 schools closed in communities across the country. Federal officials had to spend much of the day reassuring the public it’s still safe to fly and ride public transportation after VP Joe Biden said he wouldn’t recommend it to his family. “There’s not an increased risk there,” Dr. Richard Besser, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said Friday. “If you have the flu or flu-like symptoms, you shouldn’t be getting on an airplane or you shouldn’t be getting in the subway, but for the general population that’s quite fine to do,” he said.

$3 billion in loans

In Washington, the Inter-American Development Bank said it would approve $3 billion in loans for Mexico, which was already struggling from the global financial crisis. Mexican authorities, meanwhile, cancelled the traditional gatherings of workers to celebrate May Day, as the restaurants, bars, tourist sites and other public venues remained closed in the capital and elsewhere. “Stay at home with your family,” President Felipe Calderon said in an address to the nation.

The WHO said it would not as yet invoke the highest health threat level – what it calls Phase 6, meaning a worldwide pandemic is under way – but kept it at phase five, indicating a pandemic is imminent. The WHO’s acting assistant director Keiji Fukuda said the virus was behaving like a typical influenza virus, meaning there could be an increase in cases in the southern hemisphere, which is about to enter winter. Elsewhere authorities tightened travel restrictions and took other measures to keep the virus from spreading. Singapore invoked health orders not used since the SARS crisis, ordering anyone arriving from Mexico to be quarantined for one week, as Israel began airport health inspections for those coming from Mexico. Argentina and Cuba have suspended flights to Mexico.

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.