While we await word from the WHO (World Health Organization) on whether or not they are going to raise the Pandemic Alert level…
FACTOBX – WHO’s pandemic alert phases
(Reuters) – The World Health Organisation uses a series of six phases of pandemic alert as a system for informing the world of the seriousness of the threat and the need to launch progressively more intense preparations and measures.
Margaret Chan, director-general of the United Nations agency in Geneva, is charged with deciding on when to move from one phase to another.
Her decision is based on advice from international public health experts who were holding an emergency meeting on Monday to consider the issue.
The WHO emergency committee is assessing the risk from a swine flu outbreak that has killed 149 people in Mexico and spread across the world.
The current phase of alert is 3, on a scale of 1 to 6. A full-blown pandemic, level 6, denotes sustained, human-to-human spread over many countries of a new and serious virus.
Here are details of the six phases:
– INTER-PANDEMIC PHASE:
New virus in animals, no human cases
* PHASE 1:
Low risk of human cases
* PHASE 2:
Higher risk of human cases
– PANDEMIC ALERT:
New virus causes human cases
* PHASE 3:
No or very limited human-to-human transmission
* PHASE 4:
Evidence of increased human-to-human transmission
* PHASE 5:
Evidence of significant human-to-human transmission
– PANDEMIC:
* PHASE 6:
Efficient and sustained human-to-human transmission
Sources: World Health Organisation
(Compiled by Stephanie Nebehay; Editing by Robert Woo dward)