World on alert as flu epidemic spreads

Governments around the world rush to check the spread of a new type of swine flu that has killed up to 81 people in Mexico.

A woman leaves an immigration post wearing a mask as a preventive measure against infection from the swine flu, upon arrival to Tijuana's airport from Mexico City.

Governments around the world rushed today to check the spread of a new type of swine flu that has killed up to 81 people in Mexico and infected around a dozen in the United States. Mexicans huddled inside their homes while US hospitals tracked patients with flu symptoms and other countries imposed health checks at airports as the World Health Organization (WHO) warned the virus had the potential to become a pandemic. Announced on Friday, the outbreak has snowballed into a monster headache for Mexico, already grappling with a violent drug war and economic slowdown, and has quickly become one of the biggest global health scares in years. A New Zealand school group was quarantined today after returning from Mexico with flu-like symptoms, local news media reported, quoting local health authorities. Three teachers and 22 senior students from Rangitoto College in Auckland, arrived back in the country yesterday after a three-week trip to Mexico, according to the reports. Ten of the students are "likely" to have contracted swine flu, Health Minister Tony Ryall said today. "Ministry of Health officials advise me there is no guarantee these students have swine influenza, but they consider it likely," the minister said. Mexico's tourism and retail sectors could be badly hit by the crisis and a new pandemic would deal a major blow to a world economy already knocked into its worst recession in decades by the crisis in financial markets. The WHO declared the flu a "public health event of international concern." WHO Director-General Dr Margaret Chan urged greater worldwide surveillance for any unusual outbreaks of influenza-like illness. "(We are) monitoring minute by minute the evolution of this problem across the whole country," President Felipe Calderon said as health officials counted suspected infections in six states from the tropical south to the northern border. The new flu strain, a mixture of various swine, bird and human viruses, poses the biggest risk of a large-scale pandemic since avian flu surfaced in 1997, killing several hundred people. * AFP and Reuters