Highlights of comments on flu by WHO chief Chan
-- WHO is raising pandemic alert level to level 6.
"This means the world is moving into the early days of its
first influenza pandemic in the 21st century."
-- Pandemic means geographical spread, not severity.
"We also want to make clear that the higher level of the
pandemic does not necessarily mean we are going to see a more
dangerous virus or see many more people falling severely ill or
dying."
-- Global assessment of severity is pandemic is moderate,
national picture may differ.
"The global level assessment is very different from national
level assessments because it has to take into account the
vulnerability of a population in a specific country, and also
the health system resilience."
"The global versus national level severity assessment at
times may create confusion for the general public."
Governments must adjust their public health response to the
pandemic to the development of the outbreak in their country.
-- Some countries fear overreaction to the announcement,
others ask what is the problem if it is mild.
"Again the balance between the overreaction or complacency
is also another issue of great concern to the WHO."
-- Meeting with 8 countries on Wednesday where the situation
is not clear led to conclusion that community transmission is
wider than is being picked up by surveillance systems.
"Collectively, looking at that, we are satisfied that this
virus is spreading to a number of countries and is not
stoppable."
-- Information from southern hemisphere tallies with
previous pandemics.
"We have seen now this new influenza H1N1 is actually
crowding out the seasonal influenza virus. And this is a very
typical feature of previous pandemics.
-- WHO sticks by recommendation against travel restrictions.
"We do not recommend closure of borders. There should not be
restriction of movement of people, goods and services. Those are
important recommendations, they stand.
-- Vaccine production for seasonal flu and H1N1 influenza.
"The southern hemisphere is already moving into their
winter. They have completed seasonal influenza vaccine
injections for those countries that have a policy for that."
"The manufacturers are actually now making seasonal
influenza vaccine for the northern hemisphere countries for next
winter. They will be finishing that in about two weeks' time,
some may be faster and some may be a little later."
"They have also received the seed virus for making the
pandemic vaccine. So our recommendation is they need to finish
the seasonal vaccine and then move over."
(Reporting by Stephanie Nebehay; Writing by Jonathan Lynn)
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