Channel NewsAsia - Thursday, May 14
SINGAPORE: The World Health Organisation has warned that more than two billion people could be infected with the H1N1 virus within the year.
The chances of the virus making its way into Singapore are extremely high given the high volume of travel between Singapore and affected countries like America and Canada.
Singapore has yet to see an H1N1 case here and experts said the later it arrives here, the better.
Dr Julie Hall, epidemiologist, World Health Organisation, said: "We're calling on all governments to be vigilant, to try and detect the virus as quickly as possible and to try to delay the spread of the virus.
"One of the reasons for this is provide enough time for vaccine to be developed. But it's also because, as we said before, this is a virus to which we don't know the full spectrum of clinical illness, and we don't know how it will play out."
Dr Hall also touched on increasing calls by blogs and websites that propose swine flu parties — parties where infected people gather in order to build up bodily immunity against the virus.
Dr Hall added: "We don't know how this virus behaves. We don't understand fully the clinical spectrum of the disease that it can cause.
"We do believe that it is important that people are protected from the virus as much as possible. And parties to spread it would obviously increase the amount of the virus around and potentially increase the risks associated with the exposure to this virus." — CNA/vm
From Yahoo! News; see the source article here.
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