Because the WHO is asking countries where the disease is wide-spread to stop testing for definitives and refocus.
Some 98,000 confirmed cases world-wide and they want to stop testing in a manner that clearly defines its mutations and variances.
Am I one of the few who think that is utterly insane? It is a disease that is mutating from bacterial to viral and all levels in between, is present in one form or several forms in *every country in the world* and is picking up speed like a high-balling train....and they think -ts wise to ease the burden of the various countries by saying 'hey guys, we know times are tough and testing is expensive and all, and folks already know its out there, so let's just make a seemingly lateral move here and just stop the intensive testing of this PANDEMIC so we can be even farther behind the true count of victims'
Sure. Makes perfect sense. Hide your collective heads in the sand and try to sweep up the mess before folks really get wise to the origins of this thing and the history of the variations to the original.
:::GENEVA - The World Health Organisation said Tuesday it would ask countries with large caseloads of swine flu to move away from laboratory testing of individual cases towards collecting more macro-trends of the disease.
"In the next few days, the WHO will be issuing updated surveillance recommendations to countries," said Keiji Fukuda, interim assistant director-general of the WHO.
With some 137 countries and territories having reported over 98,000 cases including over 440 deaths, Fukuda said "we are now at a place in which changing the surveillance approach makes a lot of sense for many countries".
In countries where many cases have been reported, it is now necessary to move towards looking for "larger national indicators of the disease" including following influenza-like illnesses or pneumonia cases."
Because the number of cases have increased in so many countries it is very hard to keep up and so we need to move towards these kinds of indicators to keep following on with the trend of the pandemic," said Fukuda, noting that a shift would also ease pressure on laboratories.
In countries where cases have yet to be reported, Fukuda said the WHO would still recommend that individual suspect cases be tested.
He added that all countries would also be asked to test cases that appear to be unusual, in order for changes in epidemiology of the virus, which has been renamed pandemic (H1N1) 2009 by the WHO, to be recorded.
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