The United States will issue a travel advisory urging Americans to avoid all "non-essential" travel to Mexico out of concern for the swine flu outbreak.
"This is out of the abundance of caution," said Richard Besser, acting head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. He announced the travel advisory at a press conference Monday.
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also urged "caution" for anyone traveling to Mexico. The U.S. response to the outbreak was evolving on an hourly basis, as some countries enact stricter measures to prevent the spread of the flu strain.
Clinton said the government is taking the outbreak "very seriously," though President Obama said the emerging cases are not a cause for alarm.
The number of confirmed swine flu cases in the United States has doubled to 40, the World Health Organization and the CDC announced, with the 20 additional ones coming from a New York City school where students spent spring break in Mexico.
Obama said the government is "closely monitoring" emerging cases of the strain, but called the government's decision to declare a health emergency a "precautionary tool." The United States on Monday also launched border screening for swine flu exposure.
"This is obviously a cause for concern and requires a heightened state of alert," Obama said. "But it's not a cause for alarm."
As the U.S. president urged calm, countries around the world were trying to grapple with the outbreak and prevent it from spreading. The European Union advised against non-essential travel to the United States and Mexico, and China, Russia and Taiwan moved to quarantine visitors amid a surging global concern about a possible pandemic.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano also canceled a trip to Prague, where she had planned to meet with some of her European counterparts, so she could prepare and respond to the swine flu outbreak. Napolitano sent her deputy to Prague in her place.
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee is looking to call Napolitano to testify at a hearing on the outbreak, one Democratic official said, predicting the hearing would be held Wednesday.
Obama spoke as he announced a major investment in research and development at the annual meeting of the National Academy of Sciences. Though he voiced confidence in the government's handling of the outbreak, he said it underscores the need to fully fund the work of the scientific and medical community -- something he said has not happened over the last quarter century.
"This is one more example of why we can't allow our nation to fall behind," Obama said.
The United States cases spanned New York, Kansas, California, Texas and Ohio. Many of those who contracted the illness had recently visited Mexico.
All of those sickened in the United States have recovered or are recovering -- a stark difference from the outbreak in Mexico that authorities cannot yet explain.
The U.S. declared a national health emergency Sunday in the midst of confusion about whether new numbers really meant ongoing infections -- or just that health officials had missed something simmering for weeks or months. But the move allowed the government to ship roughly 12 million doses of flu-fighting medications from a federal stockpile to states in case they eventually need them.
Richard Besser, acting head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, revealed that U.S. authorities were starting to undertake "passive screening" at its borders. He restated the Obama administration's call of Sunday for people to stay calm and reported that U.S. border officials would be "asking people about fever and illness, looking for people who are ill."
Complicating response strategies internationally was what a World Health Organization official described as difficulty experts were having in assessing precisely the nature of the threat.
"These are the early days. It's quite clear that there is a potential for this virus to become a pandemic and threaten globally," said Peter Cordingley, a WHO spokesman, who said it was spreading rapidly in Mexico and the southern United States. "But we honestly don't know. We don't know enough yet about how this virus operates. More work needs to be done."
source : http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/04/27/begins-passive-screening-swine-flu-borders/
