New influenza pandemic will last for years

Could pass the year before the World Health Organization (WHO) influenza virus H1N1 switch from category to category of seasonal pandemic virus, said WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl.

"At some point in the future, be concluded that the virus no longer circulates among people on a sustainable level. Then we will reduce the level of pandemic," said Hartl, and stressed that "now is absolutely no indication that this happens."

He explained that, with increasing number of those who had already been exposed and increasing the number vaccinated, the virus becomes less contagious, passed by Reuters.

"Eventually, pandemski virus becomes more like seasonal," explained Hartl and gave forecasts that H1N1 pandemic could begin to act as a seasonal flu virus within two to three years.

China has already started in September, the first mass vaccination program against the new flu, and then both Australia and the U.S. started with vaccination, singling out as priorities for immunization of children and health workers.

Hartl stresses that there are no signs that the H1N1 virus mutate into more dangerous strain, but even that has become milder than it was in the beginning, when the spring appeared in Mexico and the United States.

In the latest report on the spread of H1N1 virus, WHO says that this fall occurred very early disease like flu in the northern hemisphere. In Europe, registered higher frequency of respiratory illness than is normal for this time of year, and this trend is more pronounced in Japan, especially in cities. More respiratory diseases than usual this time of year are registered in the U.S., Canada and Mexico.

The state with the constant expansion of influenza in tropical areas of South America and Asia. Considerable intensity of respiratory diseases registered in Colombia, Cuba and El Salvador.

On the other hand, in the southern hemisphere the situation is improving. New flu spreads to more and more difficult in Chile, Argentina and New Zealand, and the number novoobolelih decreases in South Africa and Australia.