By Kanoko Matsuyama
May 19 (Bloomberg) -- The spread of swine flu in Japan may prompt the World Health Organization to raise its pandemic alert to the highest level, said a former WHO adviser on infectious diseases.
Japan reported its first locally transmitted swine flu case on May 16, and the number jumped to 135 today from 4 less than two weeks ago. Evidence of human-to-human transmission in a region outside North America, where a majority of the almost 9,000 cases worldwide have occurred, may prompt the WHO to raise its pandemic alert by a notch to the highest level of 6.
Health officials are trying to gauge whether swine flu, known as H1N1, is spreading widely enough for the WHO to declare the first pandemic since 1968. The WHO’s pandemic alert is at phase 5, the second-highest level, meaning the organization believes “a pandemic is imminent.”
“Japan is definitely having human-to-human transmission,” Hitoshi Oshitani, who advised the agency during the SARS outbreak in Asia, said yesterday in a telephone interview. “The WHO will have to take the Japanese cases into consideration when deciding whether to raise the pandemic alert.”
The outbreak worldwide extended to 8,829 infections in 40 countries, including 74 deaths, according to Keiji Fukuda, the World Health Organization’s assistant director-general of health security and environment.
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