WHO stops giving global swine flu tally

The World Health Organisation (WHO) said today that the swine flu pandemic is moving around the globe at an "unprecedented" speed as it stopped giving figures on numbers affected.     

The WHO said in a information note on its website Friday that it would focus on regular updates from newly affected countries, in order to keep track of the global progress of the new influenza A (H1N1) pandemic.     

The influenza pandemic had "spread internationally with unprecedented speed", according to the global health watchdog.     

"In past pandemics, influenza viruses have needed more than six months to spread as widely as the new H1N1 virus has spread in less than six weeks," the WHO said.     

The agency said the counting of individual cases was no longer essential to assess the risk from swine flu but would focus on new countries to be hit by A(H1N1).     

"WHO will continue to request that these countries report the first confirmed cases and, as far as feasible, provide weekly aggregated case numbers and descriptive epidemiology of the early cases," it added. 

While it eased its overall reporting requirement, the WHO called on all countries to "closely monitor unusual events," such as possible clusters of severe or fatal infections, or unusual patterns that might be associated with worsening disease.