Flu severity key for pandemic phase decisions: WHO experts
AFP - Saturday, June 6

GENEVA (AFP) - - The World Health Organisation's emergency committee of flu experts on Friday reached "broad consensus" on the need to assess the severity of swine flu in decisions on pandemic phase changes.

"There was broad consensus of the importance of including information on severity in future announcements," the WHO said in a statement following a meeting with flu experts.

The panel of independent scientists also provided "advice regarding a number of parameters" that would help the WHO in assessing the severity of the pandemic, it added.

WHO Director General Margaret Chan can consult the panel during severe disease outbreaks.

The UN health agency reiterated that it was maintaining the pandemic alert level at five out of six, signalling that a pandemic is "imminent."

Some 69 countries around the world have reported 21,940 cases to the WHO, according to latest figures on the WHO website.

Under the WHO's guidelines, one key criteria for a move to the highest phase six alert would be established community spread in a country outside the first region in which the disease was initially reported, in this case, outside the Americas.

Other than geographical spread, WHO officials said last month that they were also looking at the severity of the virus, possible changes in the pattern of illness, its impact on poor countries or circulation in the southern hemisphere where it could mix with seasonal flu.

A senior WHO official had said Tuesday that the WHO was examining severity grading of mild-moderate-severe to the pandemic phases.

Keiji Fukuda, who is acting assistant director-general also said then that the world was "getting closer" to a swine flu pandemic as the virus shows early signs of spreading locally in countries outside the Americas.

"Globally we believe that we are at phase five but are getting closer to phase six," he said then.

He cited Australia, Britain, Japan, Spain and Chile in particular as countries where the flu was showing early signs of local spread.

Australia's swine flu tally jumped by more than a third to nearly 900 on Thursday.