China has experience with killer flus - their strict measures are totally justified

Ma Zhaoxu, a spokesman for China’s foreign ministry, defended the strict measures, saying they were justified given the fast spread of human swine flu.

SHOOT: Agreed.

As an added precaution, China suspended all flights from Mexico on Saturday, apparently leaving scores of Chinese tourists without any means to return home.

“I think it’s circulating all over the U.S.,” Dr. Anne Schuchat, the interim deputy director for science and public health at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a news conference. “The virus has arrived, I would say, in most of the country now.”

The good news, Dr. Schuchat said, is that most cases in the United States have been mild, and health officials in Mexico said that cases there seemed to be leveling off.

But Dr. Schuchat said, “I don’t think we’re out of the woods yet.” - NYT

clipped from www.nytimes.com With swine flu widespread in the United States, the World Health Organization reported Monday that the disease had widened globally, too, with 20 countries reporting 985 laboratory confirmed cases, compared to 898 confirmed cases in 18 countries on Sunday. Colombia and El Salvador were the latest countries to join the W.H.O. list, which is topped by Mexico, with 60 percent of the world’s total confirmed cases, and the United States, with 23 percent of the total. Spain remains the hardest hit country in Europe, with the health ministry saying Monday that the number of flu cases there had risen to 54. But there was no evidence of sustained human-t0-human transmission of the flu anywhere in Europe, where all but one of the cases have been mild, the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control reported.