AT the time of printing countries with confirmed cases of H1N1 (swine flu) include the USA 6,764 (10 deaths), Mexico 4,541 (68 deaths) and Canada 921 (one death), plus many others across the globe.
In the Middle East confirmed cases came from Kuwait (18) and Bahrain (1) according to the latest information from the UK’s National Health Service website, quoting sources WHO/HPA.
In Bahrain the Gulf Daily News reported that health chiefs were now looking for up to 10 airline passengers who sat near the Gulf state’s first confirmed victim of swine flu – a 21 year old Bahraini student.
The UAE also confirmed its first (swine flu) case, following which, according to a report in the Khaleej Times, Dubai was seeing a hike in the sale of surgical masks from pharmacies.
Pharmacists had confirmed that passengers heading to countries that had reported confirmed cases were buying the masks in the city, and other passengers who had not done so beforehand were making last minute purchases at the Dubai International Airport, continued the report.
At the recent World Travel & Tourism Council’s 9th Global Travel & Tourism Summit in Brazil the WTTC called for an urgent review of the WHO terminology and its classification system.
“Every effort should be made to ensure we avoid unnecessary alarm,” said Jean-Claude Baumgarten, WTTC’s president and CEO. A number of governments had also called for a review, and the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office recently revealed it no longer advises against all but essential travel to Mexico.
The World Health Organisation (WHO) was not recommending travel restrictions, because it believed that limiting travel and imposing travel restrictions would have very little effect on stopping the spread of the virus, but would be highly disruptive to the global community.
The WHO pandemic alert stood at phase 5, with level 6 officially representing a pandemic. But these designations were based on the geographic spread of the virus and not on its severity, according to the WHO terminology, which was seen as misleading by many of the delegates participating in the summit.
While the mantra ‘keep travelling’ was reiterated by the summit discussion panel, Geoffrey Lipman, assistant secretary general of the UNWTO cautioned all saying that any potential second wave of the H1N1 influenza virus could affect the industry a lot more. Lipman’s warning was reiterated by John Walker, chairman of Oxford Economics, which carried preliminary research on behalf of the WTTC to assess the potential impact of a possible H1N1 pandemic.
UNWTO head Taleb Rifai’s reaction to the swine flu situation was to spearhead a movement to bring tourism leaders to Mexico to demonstrate that there should be no travel restrictions here and to commend the Mexican government’s handling of the crisis.