According to the World Health Organization, just 17 new cases of swine flu have been confirmed on the continent during the most recent 48-hour reporting period. There have been no deaths attributed to the H1N1 virus in Europe.
Overall, 678 swine flu cases have been confirmed in Europe. Of those, exactly half (339) were in the UK, which reported 110 new cases between Monday and Wednesday. The only other European nation in triple digits is Spain, with 180 confirmed cases. Just two of those cases were new since the last reporting period.
Five European countries have hit double digits in confirmed H1N1 cases – Italy (30), Germany (28), France (26), Belgium (13), and Switzerland (10).
The virus has spread to nearly every corner of Europe. A few countries still have no confirmed cases, although that doesn’t mean the virus is non-existent there. They include all the former parts of Yugoslavia, as well as Albania, Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine.
These figures should be welcome news to American travelers planning a trip to Europe this summer, since it appears the odds of catching the virus while on the continent are less than that of catching it at home. With 16,612 confirmed cases, North America has far and away the most cases of any continent. That represents 84 percent of the world’s 19,273 cases.
The virus appears to be spreading fairly rapidly in the Southern Hemisphere, which is now entering its flu season. There have been 870 confirmed cases in South America, Central America, and the Caribbean. Chile has confirmed 313 H1N1 cases, including the first death in South America, a 37-year-old man in the city of Puerto Montt, 600 miles south of the capital, Santiago.
WHO officials have been giving indications this week that they may soon declare a global pandemic. The current pandemic alert level is at Phase Five, one step short of a full pandemic.
The WHO requirement for a Phase Six alert is community-level outbreaks in at least two WHO regions. WHO Assistant Director-General Keiji Fukuda said Tuesday that the virus is transitioning from travel-related cases to sustained community-level outbreaks in a number of countries. He noted that a pandemic declaration is not related to the severity of an illness, but rather to its geographic spread.
That geographic spread now includes Africa. The first confirmed case of swine flu on the continent was reported this week in Egypt. According to Egyptian health officials, the case involves a 12-year-old American girl who arrived in Cairo on a flight from Europe. Her family is of Egyptian ancestry and she and her mother were planning to spend the summer in Egypt. The girl is receiving treatment for the illness and reportedly is in good condition.
