WHO flu alerts to reflect severity as well as spread

By Stephanie Nebehay

GENEVA (Reuters) - The World Health Organization (WHO) kept its pandemic flu alert at the second highest level on Friday but said that future changes would reflect how severe an outbreak was as well as how widespread.

The U.N. agency has been weighing how to revamp its pandemic alert scale to reflect both the severity of the flu as well as its geographic spread around the world.

This follows criticism that it may have caused undue panic about the new strain whose effects have been mainly mild apart from in Mexico, where it is known to have killed 103 people.

"There was a broad consensus on the importance of including information on severity in future announcements," said a statement issued after flu experts held hour-long talks.

The experts, meeting as WHO's emergency committee, made recommendations on a number of factors to be taken into account to assess the severity of an epidemic, it said, without giving details.

WHO's top flu expert Keiji Fukuda said this week that one idea was to add three severity notches to the highest marker of 6, so the overall level can reach the peak even if the flu's effects remain moderate, and then be adjusted again later if the virus causes more serious health problems.

The experts also maintained their advice against closing borders or restricting international travel to try to halt the continued spread of the H1N1 influenza virus, measures deemed ineffective.

Production of seasonal influenza vaccines should also continue for now, as work proceeds on developing a vaccine against the new strain, widely known as swine flu, it said.