WHO To Incorporate Disease Severity Into Pandemic Alert Scale

KFF Monday, June 08, 2009

A meeting of the WHO's emergency committee held Friday to discuss the H1N1 (swine) flu ended without a pandemic declaration, but experts concluded that declarations would now be based upon the severity and transmission pattern of a virus, Reuters reports (Nebehay, Reuters, 6/5). "The Emergency Committee is composed of international experts and its task is to give advice to the WHO chief on influenza outbreak responses," according to Xinhua writes (Xinhua, 6/6).

"There was a broad consensus on the importance of including information on severity in future announcements," explained the WHO in a statement released after Friday's meeting. According to Reuters, "The experts … made recommendations on a number of factors to be taken into account to assess the severity of an epidemic, it said, without giving details."

The committee "maintained their advice against closing borders or restricting international travel to try to halt the continued spread of the H1N1 influenza virus, measures deemed ineffective" and also sustained support for seasonal flu vaccine production "as work proceeds on developing a vaccine against the new strain," Reuters writes. WHO officials said deciding whether to raise the pandemic alert system to phase 6 – signifying H1N1 to be a pandemic – was not "on the formal agenda" (Reuters, 6/5).

The WHO on Monday confirmed that 73 countries have officially reported 25,288 cases of influenza A(H1N1) infection, including 139 deaths. A full list of country cases and deaths is available here (WHO Influenza A(H1N1) – update 45, 6/8).