World health experts say swine flu likely to worsen

CANCUN, Mexico — World health experts warned Thursday that the global swine flu outbreak that has sickened nearly 4,000 Texans and killed 17 is all but certain to worsen in the coming months.

“We are really at the start of a global phenomenon,” Keiji Fukuda, assistant director general of the World Health Organization, said of the flu strain that has hit 121 countries since first being identified in Mexico in April.

“This is a very humbling virus,” he said.

The hundreds of specialists from 40 countries meeting here at a posh beachside resort were plotting strategies for what many dread could become an outbreak rivaling a 1918 flu pandemic that killed tens of millions of people.

Health officials in the United States, Mexico and Canada, where the flu hit hardest this spring, fear a strengthened virus will return with the winter cold. And the United Kingdom's health minister warned this week that the flu could strike as many as 100,000 Britons a day by the end of August.

“We need to plan for the most extreme scenarios as well as for the likely scenarios,” said Thomas Frieden, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. “Influenza is perhaps the most unpredictable of infectious diseases.”

This swine flu strain — which scientists are calling A-H1N1 — was first noticed in late April in Mexico City, when scores of people began falling ill.

In just three months, the virus has zipped around the world, sickening at least 80,000 people and killing 327 of them.

“Watching how quickly H1N1 spread globally was quite disconcerting,” said Canadian Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq. “It is so important for countries to have a plan in place to be able to respond.”

The World Health Organization declared the swine flu a pandemic last month — meaning it's a worldwide outbreak spread from person to person. But so far the flu has been only moderately lethal. Vaccines for the strain are being developed, and it's being effectively treated with anti-viral medicines used against seasonal flu strains.

The United States, with nearly 34,000 confirmed cases, remains the most affected country, followed by Mexico with about 9,000 confirmed cases and Canada with about 8,000.

This flu has killed least 170 Americans, a fraction of the estimated 35,000 who die each year from