The influenza pandemic continues, says a WHO spokesman

Emergency committee of the World Health Organization will not meet this week to review data on the pandemic of H1N1 virus so far not declared to the pandemic, said a WHO spokesman.
“There is no EC (emergency committee, for its acronym in English) this week. We are still monitoring and seeing how the virus behaves in the rest of the winter in the southern hemisphere,” he told Reuters the WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl.
Bloomberg News, citing two people familiar with the matter said Monday night that the emergency committee intended to meet Tuesday to review the data and declare the end of the pandemic, which began in June 2009.
Health officials are tracking the virus in countries such as Argentina, Australia, Chile, New Zealand and South Africa to check the rates of infection, Hartl said.
“We’re still in Stage 6, is still pandemic,” Hartl said, referring to the WHO scale, which denotes a phase six total influenza pandemic.
“Basically our reading after talking with a number of countries in the southern hemisphere is still too early. So this week there will be nothing,” said Hartl.
The expert committee of the flu was established by the WHO, a UN agency, to make recommendations on the pandemic, which emerged in early 2009 in the U.S. and Mexico and spread worldwide in just six weeks.
To date, the virus has killed 18 337 people officially, but the WHO says it will determine the total number at least one year after completion has been given by the pandemic.
“Worldwide, the overall activity of the pandemic is still low,” WHO said in its latest weekly update on Friday.
The virus was being transmitted even more actively in parts of southern Asia , including India, West Africa and Central America.
“Especially in moderate regions of the northern hemisphere (North America and Europe), the pandemic virus and seasonal influenza have been detected only sporadically or very low levels during the last month,” he added.