WHO: Alert Level 4

Over at Xanthippas Chamberpot there is a link to a youtube video posted by Thunderf00t discussing the World Health Organisation alert levels and describing where we are now regarding the alert over swine flu. The BBC also has useful information regarding the outbreak and what the WHO alert levels mean here in the Americas section (it started in America but affected the whole world!).

To summarise the alert levels:

Level 1: Animals have the virus. No human infections
Level 2: Animal virus causes isolated cases in humans
Level 3: Animal virus causes multiple cases in humans but no human to human infection
Level 4: Human to human infection in one community
Level 5: Human to human infection in two or more countries
Level 6: Pandemic

The WHO has raised the alert level to 4 meaning that the virus has mutated so that it can now be spread among humans.

According the Thunderf00t's video the mortality rate after infection is roughly 6% (I've not found official confirmation of those figures yet)so far from swine flu compared to 2.5% from the Spanish Flu outbreak of 1918-19. Those figures may well be distorted because of the relatively low number of confirmed cases so far and may well drop once the medical organisations start delivering medicines such as Tamiflu to those infected. What is worrying is that the virus seems to have jumped from Level 2 to Level 4 without passing through Level 3.


UPDATE: Immediately after hitting the publish button I checked the WHO site. The Director-General, Dr Margaret Chan has raised the alert level to 5.