Swine Flu's Spread Defies Border Cautions

Israel, New Zealand Confirm Cases As U.N. Health Agency Says Travel Restrictions Not Worth Economic Cost

(CBS/AP)  Cases of swine flu were confirmed Tuesday in at least two more countries as global health officials warned that travel restrictions and warnings were doing nothing to stop its advance.

The World Health Organization said it could be days before scientists are even able to reliably determine how big a threat the new virus poses.

Officials in New Zealand and Israel confirmed a handful of cases, and said other people were still suspected of infection with the H1N1 virus, which is suspected of killing 152 people in Mexico.

The number of confirmed infections in the United States almost doubled Monday to 42 as the Obama administration said it was responding aggressively, as if the outbreak would spread into a full pandemic.

New Zealand's health minister says his country has 11 confirmed cases of swine flu - the first in the Asia-South Pacific region.

Tony Ryall told reporters in the capital of Wellington that "New Zealand's status is we have 11 confirmed cases'' of swine flu and 43 suspected cases.

Those infected were members of a group of students and teachers from a single school that reported having fevers and other flu-like symptoms on their return from a recent visit to Mexico.

He said swine flu was confirmed by laboratory tests on samples from three of 11 students from the group and "on that basis we are assuming" the eight others are also infected.

An Israeli hospital, meanwhile, confirmed the country's first case of swine flu and said the patient had fully recovered.

Hospital officials said the 26-year-old patient recently returned from Mexico. Laniado Hospital's medical director said Israeli Health Ministry laboratory tests confirmed swine flu. Dr. Avinoam Skolnik said he didn't know whether the strain was the same one that appeared in Mexico.

Skolnik said Tuesday the patient was in "excellent condition." No other details were immediately available.

No new cases of the disease were reported in Mexico or the United States overnight. Thus far, the only deaths confirmed to have been caused by the virus (20 as of Tuesday morning) have been in Mexico, posing one of the most urgent questions for health officials.

The World Health Organization (WHO) upgraded its global alert on Monday to an unprecedented level-4. The highest ranking is 6, which indicates a full-blown pandemic.

WHO flu spokesman Gregory Hartl said Tuesday the alert was raised because evidence showed swine flu passing from human to human - without any contact with infected animals. He also said scientists suspect U.S. swine flu patients may have transmitted the virus to others in the United States.

Confirmation would indicate the new flu strain is spreading beyond those travelers returning from Mexico.

The global health agency says so far, most people confirmed with swine flu were infected in Mexico. But Hartl said the source of some infections in the United States, Canada and Britain was unclear.

Hartl said two of the main challenges facing the world's health authorities are figuring out how efficiently the virus spreads within a population, and why it's only killing people in Mexico.

He said it was likely the virus would continue to spread around the world in the short term, as efforts to limit cross-border travel had failed to halt the disease.

Hartl said the WHO was recommending that all countries drop their travel bans and warnings, saying, "it didn't work." He said the economic cost of restricting peoples' movement around the world would be greater than the cost, in terms of public health, of trying to stop the spread of a virus which had already crossed so many borders and was spreading indigenously.

"Border controls don't work. Screening doesn't work," he said at a news conference at the Geneva headquarters of the United Nation's public health agency.

No airport quarantine units have been activated in the U.S., reports CBS News correspondent Thalia Assuras. Customs officials are using only "passive surveillance," - simply watching for symptoms and questioning suspect passengers.

Other countries have taken more dramatic measures, reports Assuras. Russia, Hong Kong and Taiwan have sought to quarantine people showing symptoms, and Japan is using heat sensors to detect flu-like temperatures in airport arrival halls - though their reliability is questionable.

European Union officials warned citizens Monday against traveling to the United States or Mexico.

Hartl also said the WHO had still not determined the source of the swine flu.

Mexican and American health officials are urgently trying to zero in on the origins. One potential lead, reported CBS News correspondent Hari Sreenivasan, are the massive industrial hog farms that have sprung up in Mexico in recent years - some operated by U.S. companies such as Virginia-based Smithfield Foods.

They deny being the source and say they're cooperating with health officials. But Sreenivasan reported that just last year the nonprofit Pew Charitable Trusts warned that hog farms could become breeding grounds for new strains of the flu.

"The warm conditions and the close proximity of animals being able to pass viruses back and forth and to the human workers," said Bob Martin of the Pew Environmental Group. "It's a situation ripe for the development of a novel virus."

As for the disease's mysterious fatal exclusivity to Mexico, Hartl said it remained just that, a mystery. "We don't understand why the disease has been more severe in Mexico," Hartl said. He suggested it may be due to other flu-season illnesses already being carried by the hardest-hit populations, weaker immune systems in the area, or a failure by medical officials to identify and treat the illness quickly enough, as it was still unrecognizable at the time.

Hartl said it could still be days before WHO scientists were able to determine exactly how virulent this strain of H1N1 swine flu is - whether it passes easily between people of different age groups and fitness levels particularly. This assessment, he said, would help the world body decide whether to elevate the risk level beyond the current 4.

Monday evening, New Jersey health officials said they had identified five probable cases of swine flu in people who recently traveled to Mexico and California.

The New Jersey Department of Health and Senior Services said Monday that all have mild forms of the flu and none has been hospitalized. The department is arranging for confirmatory testing at the CDC.

Also, 14 schools in Texas, including a high school where two cases were confirmed, will be closed for at least the next week. Some schools in California and Ohio also were closing after students were found or suspected to have the flu.

The CDC is releasing 11 million doses of the stockpiled anti-viral drug Tamiflu to affected areas, reports CBS News correspondent Kelly Wallace. New York City pharmacists report a run on the drug, which requires a doctor's prescription. But the CDC fears that doctors giving it to patients who don't really need it may cause shortages for those who are sick.

Ariana Drauch, a swine flu victim from St. Francis Prep, told Wallace her family can't find it anywhere.

"We called every drug store in Queens, New York, everywhere," Drauch said. "And there is no Tamiflu available."

Swine Flu News Worldwide:

[gaye5]

I am sick of this rot. Many die every year from some sort of flu so why the scare campaign over this one???
Look if viruses can mutate and or join with other flu's then why do they mix a whole lot of viruses together in immunisations see below.. are they then deliberately destroying our children..
Children in America now receive 52 vaccines, in the form of 15 shots, buy the time they are 6 months of age if they receive all the recommend shots, their poor little immune system are having to cope with all this plus all the poisons in the immunisations. (just look up what is in our immunisations to find out)

If viruses can mutate as we are told regards the bird and swine flu, then why the hell are they putting all these viruses into one cocktail, imagine the potential for disaster looming as multiple live and attenuated viruses are combined during multiple vaccinations on the same day.

[hamiltongrad]

NEWS CBS IGNORES ::

THE PALESTINEAN AUTHORITY HAS SENTENCED A MAN AND HIS WIFE TO DEATH FOR SELLING HIS HOME TO A NON MUSLIM, IN THE WEST BANK.

The man and his wife may be captured by "insurgents" and just tortured to death, prior to an official hanging by the peaceful Pal authority. Nice neighbors ?

WHEN WILL THIS CYCLE OF VIOLENCE END ??

[noloyalisti]

Mass factory farming and livestock practices are very unhealthy and the reason for this outbreak. Time to de-centralize and re-organize (break up) the big multi-national corporations. Our food and lives depend on it. Also time to go back to growing our own food.

[MacThurman]

This is another income generated policies from the WHO...

So Pharmaceutical companies especially in the US will be more profitable as to get more money to the affected countries mostly developed countries. See the logic behind the stories.

[sam-kiley]

la swine flu....gagne du terrain defie les frontières, a cause de
leur proximité avec le méxique, les états unis ..enregistrent de nouveaux cas...mais ils viendront surement a bout ...je l'espére, leurs structures sanitaires étant plus développées en comparaison a ceux de leurs voisins du mexique..les moyens de sensibilisation aussi sont plus performants..je souhaite aussi que cette swine flu soit stoppée a temps, avant qu'elle ne touche les pays du tiers monde, sinon bonjour les dégats..a bon entendeur salut

au revoir...

[wardoglrs]

Keep the people frightened
Of things they cannot know
Is the secret of the Tomb

If they knew what you and I know
They would know it is just men
Who rob them, cheat them, kill them
Then start it all again
- Orville X

In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way. Franklin D. Roosevelt, Father of the Welfare State



The Democracy will cease to exist when you take from those who are willing to work and give to those who would not "TJ"

The Natural progress of things for liberty to yield and government to gain ground "TJ"

"Reform cannot be achieved by a well-intentioned leader who recruits his followers from the very people whose moral confusion is the cause of the disorder." - Socrates


A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine. - Thomas Jefferson

[Americanascanbe]

This is a distraction for the weak minded to focus on something other than the War Crimes investigations!
Posted by didserve at 9:47 AM : Apr 28, 2009

Ha Ha Ha!
Hey didserve a wise man once said; Man (or society) cannot get ahead if they spend all their time trying to get EVEN.

So in these troubled time you Bush haters cant let go of this nonsense that someone poured water on the face of some terrorist? Sorry I dont feel for the terrorists or even the three pirates that the Obama admin just smoked. Do you weep for them too? I mean we just used a big naval ship with a billion dollars worth of technology to smoke three pirates aka; OCEAN TERRORISTS. And hey we didnt even declare war against the pirates....yet. Why are you not shouting about that too.
What Obama said about "yes we can". and the whole lets put a new face Washington promise is slipping away and if it continues and the leftist liberals get their way this Country will be in worse trouble than it is now.

[mjm117]

This is a distraction for the weak minded to focus on something other than the War Crimes investigations!
Posted by didserve at 9:47 AM : Apr 28, 2009

LOL! Yes, the entire world is in on it!

[didserve]

This is a distraction for the weak minded to focus on something other than the War Crimes investigations!

[mjm117]

The fact that this bug has been in our airports means it will be everywhere.

The good news is though...it's a d*mn flu bug. Go to the doctor if you don't feel well...you'll be just fine

[meinohio2]

border controls will not help with something like the flu - any flu. You can be contagious before you even start to show symptoms - up to 1 or 2 days before symptoms might show up. I don't know why everyone is getting all flustered about border controls working or not working. Even if they were in place, and had been for awhile, it won't stop the flu from spreading.

[mjm117]

Many of my fiends here are Democrats - just reasonable ones.
I am not into extremists on either side.
Posted by TheMasses02 at 9:06 AM : Apr 28, 2009

Extremes are dangerous...on both sides. And...I'm not necessarily a dem...

[erasmus111]

How the heck do we know they don't work? No one has tried any border controls!

This is just a laugh riot, folks...the first time anyone mentioned the possibility of border controls was yesterday, but today we are "stopping" them because they don't work? What the heck is going on here?

Posted by thewisewoman at 8:41 AM : Apr 28, 2009

Yeah, I was quite hysterical over that myself. : )

No one has even tried to stop anyone from crossing. But that wouldn't have been enough anyways. They would have had to stop flights as well. The problem is that realistically something would have had to be done immediately.

[TheMasses02]

It's not often I agree with TheMasses...but I do here.
Posted by mjm117
---------------------------------

Many of my fiends here are Democrats - just reasonable ones.
I am not into extremists on either side.

[mjm117]

The article reveals the tip of the iceberg.
It is not cost effective for the global economy to close the borders.
Posted by TheMasses02 at 8:58 AM : Apr 28, 2009

It's not often I agree with TheMasses...but I do here. Why bother? It's already out and about.

That, and I didn't buy trip insurance for my vacation in a month!

[mrs_entity]

mrs entity, if god exists he should kill you first and do the world away with a huge sinner. Go commit suicide like your fanatic friends the davidians.
Posted by mejordelahistoria
===================
If he did that he would lose one of the few good people on this earth.

[TheMasses02]

but today we are "stopping" them because they don't work? What the heck is going on here?
Posted by thewisewoman
------------------------------
The article reveals the tip of the iceberg.
It is not cost effective for the global economy to close the borders.

[TheMasses02]

Hatred in any form is dangerous.
Posted by mjm117
------------------------------
Yet, as human beings; it remains alive and well.

[vancouverboo]

What border?

[mjm117]

mjm... why does it have to be all that??? maybe hes like you ,, skinny,pale, with glasses you paid too much for.. poodle for a pet.. I am thinking your attitude about americans protecting the border is shallow at best.. how about you adopt 20 or 30 of those illegals and pay for their futures
Posted by orthotek-2009 at 8:45 AM : Apr 28, 2009

You may be right, I could have gone a little overboard. My point was more geared towards generalizations and pure hatred. To blame an entire group of people for all of our problems is simply insane. So, I treated his post with the same insanity.

As for me, yes...I'm pale...but it's because I live in the NW. The rest...well, you have me all wrong.

I hope you see the point I was making. Hatred in any form is dangerous.