Posted: Tuesday, April 28, 2009 3:01 PM
GENEVA – Despite fears of swine flu turning into a full-blown pandemic, the atmosphere in the main hall of the 1970s-style headquarters of the World Health Organization in Geneva seems very business as usual.
On Tuesday morning, small groups of international health experts engaged in scientific talk over cups of coffee in the lobby's cafeteria, while others, with briefcases or paperwork under their arms, walked across the shiny marble floor to and from adjacent elevators.
But appearances of normality aside, only a few feet away from the lobby coffee shop is WHO's Strategic Health Operations Center – the so-called SHOC room. It is an emergency center where WHO experts have been gathering over the last several days to monitor the evolving swine flu crisis.
"This is where we gather our scientists, our infection control experts, our epidemiologists, our logisticians," said Dr. Margaret Chan, the Director-General of WHO, as she explained how the international organization has been monitoring the feared pandemic.
"We capture information from all the offices of WHO through our regional office. We have a daily teleconference here and we can connect to countries if necessary, so that we can, in real time, share information as quickly as possible," said Chan. "And when dealing with new and emerging infection – action, speed and good information, good quality information is extremely important."
‘Get ready’
On Monday evening, the WHO decided to raise the alert level from Phase 3 to Phase 4, following a four-hour meeting of the organization's emergency committee. The change in alert level to Phase 4 means that there is sustained human-to-human transmission of the virus causing outbreaks in at least one country.
"Moving to Phase 4 means ‘get ready,’" WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl said yesterday. "If we move to Phase 5 we are basically saying that this is a pandemic virus, we need to take big measures like vaccine production."
Keiji Fukuda, acting WHO Assistant General for Health, Security and Environment, said at a press conference following the emergency meeting that the heightened alert was a "sign of a step towards pandemic influenza, but a stage that says we are not there yet."
"The collection of information, the analysis of it, the monitoring by all countries around the world is really critical because this is how we are going to tell if we are moving into Phase 5 or not," Fukuda said.
He added that "it was not considered inevitable at this time" that the virus would become a pandemic.
"The situation is fluid and continues to evolve, and we will monitor [it]," he told a small group of reporters yesterday, after emerging from a virtual press conference in the WHO's own TV studio.
No closed borders
In a significant move, the body stopped short of recommending travel restrictions or border closures.
Still a number of European Union countries, as well as Canada and Israel, have advised their nationals against non-vital travel to Mexico and areas where the deadly virus has surfaced, including the United States.
But in Geneva, WHO stressed last night that it is not calling for an endorsement of any travel or border restrictions.
"WHO, from the international perspective, believes that instituting travel restrictions would not significantly help in the protection of people," said Fukuda. "We are very mindful that when you issue travel restrictions this can have many different effects: it can cause hardships for people, it can cause a lot of untoward effects."
‘When’ the key word
As governments around the world take measures to curb the spread of the new flu strain, experts in Geneva caution it is still too early to predict whether the world will face a new and deadly pandemic.
At the beginning of bird flu crisis in 2004, several frightening scenarios were painted but they never came to pass. Nevertheless, experts are taking this new situation very seriously.
"We have always said that in case of a pandemic, it is not a question of if, but when. But, we don't know when, that is the key word," said Hartl.
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