Local people wear masks during a training session given by Thai officials on how to make hygienic hand sanitizing gels from alcohol and chemicals for their families at a school in Bangkok on July 16.

Vietnam’s health ministry confirmed Friday seven more H1N1 cases, as the World Health Organization (WHO) announced the pandemic was spreading at “unprecedented” speed and stopped releasing figures on numbers affected.

The six new cases in the south and one in the north took the country’s tally to 345 cases.

The Ministry of Health also reported an increase in infections recently among people entering Vietnam on road, apart from those arriving on flights.

The Center for Preventive Health in Dong Nai Province on Friday reported 17 locals of Viet Kieu Hamlet in Xuan Loc District had tested positive to influenza A (H1N1) and were being treated under quarantine at the HCMC Hospital for Tropical Diseases and the Xuan Loc General Hospital.

The patients include 49-year-old Vu Duc Yen, an overseas Vietnamese from the US, his wife Chu Thi Sen and his son Vu Minh Tuan. Fourteen other patients were identified to have had direct contact with Yen’s family.

Yen’s family had arrived at the Tan Son Nhat International Airport on July 10 and two of their children had been quarantined as they had high temperatures. Subsequent tests found the two had contracted the H1N1 virus.

Doctors of Xuan Loc General Hospital said they had quarantined seven others at Viet Kieu Hamlet for flu tests, after they recorded high body temperatures. Twenty others were also encouraged to quarantine themselves at home to avoid the possible spread of the flu, which is also known as swine flu.

No global tally

The AFP news agency reported Friday that the WHO had stopped giving figures on numbers affected, saying that the influenza A (H1N1) pandemic was moving around the globe at an “unprecedented” speed.

The WHO said in an information note on its website that it would focus on regular updates from newly affected countries, in order to keep track of the global progress of the new influenza A (H1N1) pandemic.

The influenza pandemic had “spread internationally with unprecedented speed,” it added.

“In past pandemics, influenza viruses have needed more than six months to spread as widely as the new H1N1 virus has spread in less than six weeks,” WHO said.

The agency said the counting of individual cases was no longer essential to assess the risk from influenza A (H1N1) but would focus on new countries to be hit by the flu.

“WHO will continue to request that these countries report the first confirmed cases and, as far as feasible, provide weekly aggregated case numbers and descriptive epidemiology of the early cases,” it added.

While it eased its overall reporting requirement, the WHO called on all countries to “closely monitor unusual events,” such as possible clusters of severe or fatal infections, or unusual patterns that might be associated with worsening disease.

The policy shift was partly motivated by the “mildness of symptoms in the overwhelming majority of patients, who usually recover, even without medical treatment, within a week of the onset of symptoms.”

“Moreover, the counting of individual cases is now no longer essential in such countries for monitoring either the level or nature of the risk posed by the pandemic virus” or to guide the best response, the UN health agency added.

In some countries, the investigation and laboratory testing of all cases had absorbed huge resources, leaving health systems with little capacity to monitor severe cases or exceptional events that might mark an increase in the virulence of influenza A (H1N1).

“For all of these reasons, WHO will no longer issue the global tables showing the numbers of confirmed cases for all countries.”

Source: TN, AFP