More than 6,000 deaths from swine flu have now been reported worldwide as the virus spreads rapidly through the northern hemisphere, it has been announced.
Pandemic flu is now increasing in many countries in Europe and Central and Western Asia while there is no sign of the pandemic abating in North America, according to the World Health Organisation.
WHO said swine flu – H1N1 – is now the main flu virus in China and the number of cases is increasing. And Japan is reporting sharp increases in rates.
In Canada schools are being hit badly.
WHO said doctors around the globe are seeing high rates of flu-like illness – and laboratory testing suggests that about about half of these are H1N1 flu.
In North America the proportion is 42 per cent while in Northern Ireland it reaches 81 per cent and in Belgium 69 per cent.
Around the world animals, such as pigs, turkey, ferrets and cats, are reported to have contracted the virus from humans – but WHO said this was unlikely to affect the pandemic as it was "spreading readily via human-to-human transmission".
WHO says world-wide more than 482,300 cases of swine flu have now been confirmed with more than 6,000 deaths – most of these in North America.
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