The EU on Thursday (30 April) urged Europeans not to panic over the swine flu outbreak and sought to reassure them, with the Czech EU presidency calling the bloc the “best prepared region in the world” to face what is an increasingly likely pandemic.
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS
Although the new virus is continuing to spread in Europe, with 26 confirmed cases in five EU member states (Spain, the UK, Germany, Austria and the Netherlands) and one in Switzerland as of Thursday evening, there is “no need to panic,” EU health commissioner Androulla Vassiliou said.
“We believe we are prepared to deal with this,” says EU health commissioner Androulla Vassiliou (Photo: European Commission)
“The fact that we have been preparing ourselves in the EU for an event such as this for some years now, and the experience gained so far, puts us in a much stronger position,” she said at a press conference following an emergency meeting of EU health ministers in Luxembourg.
The ministers concluded their countries should “take all appropriate measures, if necessary also as regards travel, to ensure the most efficient protection to citizens, based on consultations at European level, taking into account the evolution of this situation.”
But they rejected a French proposal for an EU-wide travel ban to Mexico, where the outbreak started.
Several member states, including Spain and Germany, had opposed France’s idea.
“We will leave this to the consideration of every member state,” said Czech health minister Daniela Filipiova who was presiding over the meeting.
Working on a vaccine
The health ministers also rejected an Italian proposal that member states should set up a “drug bank” of flu remedies and vaccines, arguing that each member state should determine how best to deal with health problems.
Spanish minister Trinidad Jiminez was quoted by AFP as saying: “We don’t consider that the Italian proposal is necessary.”
“Each country has sufficient reserves now to be able to follow the recommendations of the World Health Organisation for the moment,” she said.
The ministers said they would “continuously share information” on the virus and provide their citizens with “accurate, timely and consistent information and guidance” on the situation.
They also agreed to co-operate in order to create together with the pharmaceutical industry “a pilot vaccine covering the A/H1N1 virus in the shortest possible delay.”
Ms Vassiliou acknowledged that developing such a vaccine would “most probably take several months,” however.
Pandemic ‘likely,’ but EU ready
The EU meeting came as the number of countries suspected to have cases of people infected by the new virus has been multiplying in the last few days – both in Europe and beyond – now including South Africa, South Korea, Guatemala, Australia and Brazil.
Mexico and the US have had the highest number of confirmed cases so far, 109 and 97 respectively, with many more suspected to have been infected.
The virus has also killed 12 people in Mexico and one in the US.
Since this is a new virus and it is spreading from person to person, “it is very likely that we will reach a pandemic,” Ms Vassiliou said.
However, “this does not mean it will be deadly,” she added, stressing that the virus had not caused any deaths in Europe and that all of those infected have been treated and are recovering well.
Putting the situation into perspective, she recalled that hundreds of thousands of people die from normal seasonal flu every year.
“We believe we [EU] are prepared to deal with this … We are worried, but we are on top of things,” Ms Vassiliou said.
For her part, Ms Filipiova stressed that the EU was “the best prepared region in the world” to face a potential pandemic.
No more ‘swine’ flu
Meanwhile, the World Health Organisation, which on Wednesday raised the level of its pandemic crisis alert system to five out of six – meaning that a pandemic is “imminent”, said that it had no reason at this stage to raise it further.
“We do not have any evidence to suggest that we should move to phase six today, or any such move is imminent right now,” WHO assistant director-general Keiji Fukuda was quoted by the BBC as saying.
The organisation also announced it would from now on refer to the virus as influenza A (H1N1), while the EU has been using the term “novel virus,” with both aiming to avoid confusion over the danger posed by pigs implied by the “swine flu” denomination.
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