Swine flu outbreak spreads to Asia, Middle East

Reported Cases:
Mexico

• Killed 152 people, sickened 2,000 people
  

United States:

• 43 cases reported - Found in California, Texas, Kansas, New York, Ohio, New Jersey - no fatalities reported (Only 1 needed to be hospitalized)
  
• The U.S.has stepped up border checks in neighboring states.

Canada (confirmed on Sunday 4/26):

• 6 cases in Nova Scotia and British Columbia (traveled to Mexico but have recovered)
  

New Zealand:

• 11 Confirmed Cases - none are seriously ill
  

Spain:

• 2 Confirmed Cases

Israel:

• 1 Confirmed Case
  

France: Suspected Cases

South Korea:

• 1 Suspected Case

Travel alerts
Governments around the world have taken steps to tighten monitoring of their airports or advised against non-essential travel to Mexico.

Britain, France and Germany issued travel alerts for Mexico. Japan advised its citizens in Mexico to consider returning home soon, saying they might find themselves unable to leave and not be able to get adequate medical care.

The top EU health official urged Europeans on Monday to postpone nonessential travel to parts of the United States and Mexico because of the swine flu virus

At Madrid's Barajas International Airport, passengers arriving from Mexico were asked to declare where they had been and whether they had felt any cold symptoms.

Quarantine
Russia, Hong Kong and Taiwan said they would quarantine visitors showing symptoms of the virus amid global fears of a pandemic.

Treatment
The swine flu bug is curable if treated quickly with antiviral medicine but no one is naturally immune.

Vaccine
It could take four to six months before the first batch of vaccines are available to fight the virus, WHO officials said.

More Info
No one has died outside Mexico but cases have also been confirmed in Canada and Scotland, prompting the World Health Organization on Monday to raise its alert level for the outbreak.

The WHO lifted its pandemic alert to phase 4, meaning there is sustained human-to-human transmission of the virus causing outbreaks in at least one country. It also indicates the risk of a deadly global outbreak.

Phase 6 is for a full-blown pandemic, characterized by outbreaks in at least two regions of the world.

The last pandemic, a Hong Kong flu outbreak in 1968, killed about one million people around the world.

China, Russia and Ukraine were among countries banning imports of pork and pork products from Mexico and three U.S. states that have reported swine flu cases, while other countries, such as Indonesia, banned all pork imports.

President Barack Obama said the threat of spreading infections is cause for concern but "not a cause for alarm."