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The authorities are calling on people in Malta who travelled to Mexico in the past three weeks to contact the Department for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention if they need professional advice on the swine flu, the Director General for Public Health Regulation, Ray Busuttil said today.

He insisted, however, that there was no cause for alarm in Malta and life had to go on as usual. The department has so far not been contacted by anyone concerned after travelling to Mexico.

Dr Busuttil told a press conference that the authorities had alerted all doctors to be more suspicious of flu-like symptoms and they were circulating a memo to doctors giving them more information and a case definition of swine influenza. For the moment, he said, the case definition included a link to Mexico.

He said that the World Health Organisation and the European Centres for Disease Prevention and Control had not recommended any travel restrictions but had recommended that people take precautions if they travelled to affected areas, such as avoiding crowded places, washing their hands, covering their mouths when coughing or sneezing and disposing of used tissues.

The National Pandemic Steering Committee and the Pandemic Committee within the Health Division met this afternoon to review the situation. From the health perspective, some preliminary preparations were taken in hand, such as ensuring that equipment earmarked for use in a pandemic was readily available.

Dr Busuttil said that while there was no vaccine in existense and it could take up to six months to have this available, there had been no reports of resistance to the anti-viral Tamiflu, which the Maltese government had in stock for a quarter of the population, Dr Busuttil said.

He warned however, that the people should not just take Tamiflu but contact the health authorities if required. People with flu-like symptoms should stay at home.

The authorities can be contacted on 21324086.

The virus has so far killed 103 people in Mexico and spread to North America. Spain became the first country in Europe to confirm a case of swine flu when a man who returned from a trip to Mexico last week was found to have the virus. But his condition, like that of 20 cases identified in the United States and six in Canada, was not serious. (Britain confirmed two cases late this afternoon.)

A New Zealand teacher and around a dozen students who recently returned from Mexico were also being treated as likely mild swine flu cases.

While the swine flu virus has so far killed no one outside Mexico, the fact that it has proved able to spread quickly between humans has raised fears that the world may finally be facing the flu pandemic that scientists say is long overdue.

Cases of the flu, which has components of classic avian, human and swine flu viruses but has not actually been seen in pigs, were suspected in France, Italy and Israel.

Many countries have stepped up surveillance at airports and ports, using thermal cameras and sensors to identify people with fever, and the World Health Organisation has opened its 24-hour "war room" command centre.

U.S. EMERGENCY

The United States declared a public health emergency yesterday. Although most cases outside Mexico were relatively mild, a top official at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said she feared there might be U.S. fatalities.

The WHO has declared the flu a "public health emergency of international concern" that could become a pandemic, or global outbreak of a serious disease.

Its emergency committee is due to decide later today whether to raise its pandemic alert level, currently at 3 on a scale of 1 to 6.

"If we go to phase 4 because of the swine flu virus, it basically means that we believe that a potential pandemic virus has potentially shown it can transmit from person to person and cause large outbreaks," WHO Acting Assistant Director-General Keiji Fukuda said on Sunday.

But so far there have been no broad recommendations to limit international travel.

MEXICO SLOWS TO A HALT

Japan's cabinet held a special meeting and said it would prioritise production of a new vaccine, although this process usually takes months.

In Mexico, the centre of the swine flu outbreak, life has slowed dramatically in cities as schools have been closed and public events called off to slow the spread of the virus.

Many in Mexico City spent the weekend hunkered at home or wore blue surgical face masks handed out by truckloads of soldiers to venture out onto strangely hushed streets. The city government considered halting public transport.

Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova said yesterday that the flu had killed 103 people in Mexico, and about 400 people had been admitted hospital. But he noted that a majority of infected patients had recovered.

Health authorities across Asia tried to give reassurance, saying they had enough stockpiles of anti-flu drugs to handle an outbreak.

Guan Yi, a virology professor at the University of Hong Kong who helped to fight SARS and bird flu, said a pandemic looked inevitable.

"I think the spread of this virus in humans cannot possibly be contained within a short time ... there are already cases in almost every region. The picture is changing every moment ...

"We are counting down to a pandemic."