Wow, I certainly hope that this doesn’t effect our local tequila supplies. Remember when that happened a few years back? Suddenly there was no tequila in town. In fact, there was a global tequila shortage if I remember correctly. Hectique!

Anyway, you may have heard about the Swine Flu outbreak all over the US. From what was first spotted in March 2009 in Mexico, has now spread to the US, Canada, Spain and the UK.

The world Health Organisation has increased the Pandemic Alert to 4 – “Small cluster(s) with limited human-to-human transmission but spread is highly localized, suggesting that the virus is not well adapted to humans. An epidemic is possible but has not yet happened.”

EU Health Officials have urged against travel to the US and Mehico.

This, from Inquisitr:

EU health officials
have issued a Swine Flu travel warning, urging Europeans to postpone all nonessential travel to the United States and Mexico.

The call comes after Spain became the first European country with a confirmed case of Swine Flu, and around 20 others suspected of carrying the virus in Spain have been isolated. Notably a travel warning like this is usually only applied to third world countries, or for countries where there is a civil disturbance.

Naturally Government representatives in the United States disagreed with the warning. Richard Besser, acting director of the Atlanta-based Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said any such restriction was unwarranted because of the limited number and seriousness of cases in the country. However Besser did agree with the travel warning applying to Mexico.

The warning against travel to North America will further hit airlines who were already struggling with the effects of the recession. Airline and travel stocks took a big beating today, with the AMEX Airline Index (AMEX:XAL.X), which tracks 13 airline stocks, falling 10.62%.

Pretty wild. Even though today, World Health Organisation flu expert Keiji Fukuda pointed out that it is too late to contain the swine flu “Containment is not a feasible operation. Countries should now focus on mitigating the effect of the virus,” he said. He also stressed that the experts did not recommend closing borders or restricting travel. “With the virus being widespread… closing borders or restricting travel really has very little effects in stopping the movement of this virus.” [More here].

Even Google Maps has got involved, with a very useful world map, documenting where the virus has been detected, and at what level.

Looking good in South Africa
Clean as a whistle!

Check out that map for yourself, as well as information on each case that has been detected (pertaining to each marker on the map).

CLICK HERE.

[thanks mark]