Friday, June 12, 2009 GENEVA: The World Health Organization raised the swine flu alert Thursday to its highest level, saying the H1N1 virus has spread to enough countries to be considered a global pandemic.Increasing the alert to Phase 6 does not mean that the disease is deadlier or more dangerous than before, just that it has spread to more countries, the WHO said."This is an important and challenging day for all of us," WHO Director General Margaret Chan said in a briefing with reporters. "We are moving into the early days of the first flu pandemic of the 21st century."The last previous pandemic occurred in 1968. As of Thursday, the virus had spread to 74 countries, the health agency said. There were 28,774 confirmed cases and 144 deaths. The United States had 13,217 cases and 27 deaths, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said June 5 in its weekly update. Cases have been reported in all 50 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico. The U.S. death toll is expected be higher when the CDC releases its latest figures Friday, said Anne Schuchat, director of the National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.New England -- particularly Massachusetts -- and the New York and New Jersey areas have been hit the hardest, Schuchat said Thursday at a CDC news conference. The Phase 6 pandemic designation had been widely expected for weeks. "Further spread is considered inevitable," Chan said at a news conference at WHO headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. "The scientific criteria for an influenza pandemic have been met."The announcement came after a meeting of the WHO's Emergency Committee, which has debated since April whether the spread of a novel H1N1 flu virus was fast and widespread enough to warrant a Phase 6 designation.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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