Now that we are finding out that it began at a Hog farm in California, will we begin calling it the California Flu?

Swine 'flu now unstoppable. This from the BBC website today.

 

 

The UN's top health official, Margaret Chan, has opened a forum in Mexico on combating swine flu by saying that the spread of the virus worldwide is now unstoppable.

 

The WHO says most H1N1 cases are mild, with many people recovering unaided.

 

As the summit opened, the UK alone was projecting more than 100,000 new cases of H1N1 a day by the end of the summer. As the peak of the flu season approaches in South America, some areas have declared a public health emergency. El Salvador reported its first death from swine flu, a day after Paraguay reported its first fatality.

 

She stressed that the overwhelming majority of patients experienced mild symptoms and made a full recovery within a week, often in the absence of any form of medical treatment.

The exceptions, she said, were pregnant women and people with underlying health problems, who were at higher risk from complications from the virus and should be monitored if they fell ill.

 

"For a pandemic of moderate severity, this is one of our greatest challenges: helping people to understand when they do not need to worry, and when they do need to seek urgent care," Dr Chan said.

 

It has been more than two months since the initial alert over swine flu. Since then, the H1N1 virus has entered more than 100 countries, infected more than 70,000 people and killed more than 300 worldwide.