friday horton hears a who flu lunch

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How pleasant to come here and find evidence we're on the ball we dropped at last:

WHO examines its response to swine flu outbreak
Fri May 1, 8:32 am ET

GENEVA (AFP) – The World Health Organisation said on Friday that it is examining its response to the swine flu outbreak in Mexico following accusations that the UN agency reacted too slowly.

Oh, perfect, now that we need you spending your time on the pandemic, you're breaking for self-examination.

Spokesman Thomas Abrahams said WHO headquarters was informed by the US Centers for Disease Control (CDC) about the emergence of a new flu virus early on April 24.

Except the outbreak may have started a couple months ago, and information about its possible threat had been available to WHO for maybe more than a month... at any event, pretty much longer than enough time to get the ball rolling.

"There are case of influenza all the time, but once we knew that this illness was cause by a new influenza virus... we moved into operation within a matter of hours," he told journalists.

Abrahams appears to be from the famed Chinese Tang Dynasty Abrahams lineage, and had plenty of reason to know it was virulent and deadly. Even if it was an OLD strain, WHO should have been moving. Am I right? Huge spike in sick people in one region? Big spike in unexplained severe pneumonia deaths in a few regions? And you have to wait to see if it's a new virus? Huh?

"One of the things we are doing internally is documenting everything we have done, when we did it and how we have done it," Abrahams added.

We are being perfectly transparent about everything so that you can cut us to ribbons all you like... if you live... swine... heh, heh, heh, heh.

Media reports in recent days said there was a delay of eight days in the WHO's response to swine flu which has now been termed A(H1NI) flu by the WHO.

ANOTHER new name, and probably better-suited than the CDC's.

Mexican health authorities notified the WHO's Washington-based regional branch, the Pan American Health Organisation (PAHO), on April 16 of a possibly brewing epidemic, following "unusual pneumonia cases", according to the Washington Post's website.

So unusual people were dropping like, excuse me, flies all over the place.

A US bio-surveillance firm, Veratect, said on its website that its tracking reports of atypical pneumonia and respiratory disease in Mexico early last month were made available to the WHO.

This is a fact, and I found it on the second day I knew about this flu, and the first day I decided to really look into it. Which, is not to pat myself on my feeble back, it is to highlight that the nerve center for public health on this planet seems to have either completely ignored or taken their sweet time about investigating the scary Veratect data, and only decided to send out samples for analysis sometime after the Mexican authorities manned up enough against Smithfield to sound alarms.

Bolstered international health regulations introduced in 2005 were meant to beef up the speed of the WHO's response to emerging and suspicious cases of illness in a country.

Is this the beefed-up version? I'm impressed by Veratect's performance, but the WHO has to RESPOND.

Its regional offices, such as PAHO, form local hubs of communication between countries and Geneva headquarters under the system.

How nice.

Abrahams said: "On Friday 24, I think we were informed early in the morning. Immediately after that our strategic operations centre went into action."

Bully. You should have gone into action when Veratect warned you. That's what you pay them for.

WHO chief Margaret Chan, who was on an official trip to Washington, met US and Mexican officials and went to PAHO, then flew back to Geneva the next day.

So? This speeds response how?

"By Saturday evening she was making a public statement here saying we had a potential pandemic virus. I think this is a pretty rapid response," he added.

No, no, putz, making a public statement immediately after finding out you've dropped the ball is NOT a rapid response! That is what you would call extremely sluggish alacrity. There can be little doubt that had WHO sent people to check when they got the information from Veratect, or whoever was earliest to mention it, there was still a chance of containing it. There was a chance of that until EASTER blew it all to bits.

Still, I am massively pleased to see this on the wires. Better late than never.

_________________________________________________________________________________

And we've added another two countries and over a hundred new cases in a day:

Influenza A(H1N1) - update 8

1 May 2009 -- The situation continues to evolve. As of 19:00 GMT, 1 May 2009, 13 countries have officially reported 365 cases of influenza A(H1N1) infection.

The United States Government has reported 141 laboratory confirmed human cases, including one death. Mexico has reported 156 confirmed human cases of infection, including nine deaths.

The following countries have reported laboratory confirmed cases with no deaths - Austria (1), Canada (34), China, Hong Kong, Special Administrative Region (1), Denmark (1), Germany (3), Israel (2), Netherlands (1), New Zealand (3), Spain (13), Switzerland (1) and the United Kingdom (8).

Further information on the situation will be available on the WHO website on a regular basis.

WHO advises no restriction of regular travel or closure of borders. It is considered prudent for people who are ill to delay international travel and for people developing symptoms following international travel to seek medical attention, in line with guidance from national authorities.

There is also no risk of infection from this virus from consumption of well-cooked pork and pork products. Individuals are advised to wash hands thoroughly with soap and water on a regular basis and should seek medical attention if they develop any symptoms of influenza-like illness.

Which you should not forget is the number of suspected cases that finally turned into confirmed cases when they got their hands on the appropriate testing kit and managed to get to WHO to add into their finally closer to real time [from agonizingly slow report to reporting it] reporting.

Test kits weren't even authorized by the FDA until 27 April, let alone sent out by the CDC, which I think got to it on the 29th:

In authorizing an EUA for the rRT-PCR Swine Flu Panel diagnostic test, the FDA has determined that it may be effective in testing samples from individuals diagnosed with influenza A infections, whose virus subtypes cannot be identified by currently available tests. This EUA allows the CDC to distribute the swine flu test to public health and other qualified laboratories that have the needed equipment and the personnel who are trained to perform and interpret the results.

The test amplifies the viral genetic material from a nasal or nasopharyngeal swab. A positive result indicates that the patient is presumptively infected with swine flu virus but not the stage of infection. However, a negative result does not, by itself, exclude the possibility of swine flu virus infection.

So you can see why there has been such sluggish reporting of confirmed cases.

"Real time," my herd of Guernseys. I know this is a lot faster than in 1918, but it still seems to me "sweet time" is a more appropriate term. This is an emergency and all their podcasts are still so full of self-congratulatory non-statements I could scream. Wait. I am screaming. They should be talking in short snippets, parts of sentences, like * does, only with facts. Then we'd know it was being HANDLED and no time wasting.