Belize Reacts To Swine Flue Virus - Cancels Public Events

Belize Ministry of Health spokesman Dr. Paul Edwards told the press today that:

""One of the key decisions made--recommendation by Director of Health Services,
Dr. Michael Pitts today was to not have and this is an recommendation to not
have public gatherings, major public gathering. And that is in direct reference
to the Agricultural fair, the Cashew fair, the Morgan Heritage concert, the
Circus and possibly even in relation to P.S.E. examinations next week. The
recommendation then, it is made by the Director of Health Services and the
intent is to pass that the Prime Minister for his decision-making.

The justification for the recommendation includes various factors. One, the World
Health Organization has moved now from phase four to a phase five and when we
talk about a phase five we're talking by the fact it is characterize by human-
to-human spread of the virus into at least two countries, in one World Health
Organization region and when we talking in that region specifically, it is the
region of the Americas as compared to other regions like Europe and Africa etc.

And while most countries will not be affected at this stage, phase five is a
strong signal that a pandemic is imminent and that it is now time to finalize
the organization, communication and implementation of the planned mitigating
method because the time short

However in Belize, while that have been declared we have to be cognizant of the fact that we do not have any confirmed case of  the swine flu up to this time. However though we have four cases of interest that are being investigated. None of these individuals are hospitalized and today we were able to send four of those samples to the Caribbean Epidemiological Centre."