Frankrijk roept op tot verbod op reizen naar Mexico (en)
France is to push for an EU ban on flights to Mexico during an emergency meeting of the bloc's health ministers in Luxembourg on Thursday (30 April), while the first death from swine flu outside the North American nation has been confirmed and the World Health Organisation has said a pandemic is now "imminent."
"We will ask our European colleagues to consider the suspension of flights going to Mexico," French health minister Roselyne Bachelot said after talks with President Nicolas Sarkozy i on Wednesday.
Return flights from Mexico to the EU would not be stopped at this stage however, she said, the BBC reports.
Several EU countries besides France – including the UK, the Netherlands and Italy – are already advising against travelling to Mexico, 'ground zero' of the flu's outbreak.
The virus has already contaminated close to 2,500 and killed eight in the country, with as many as 168 more death cases attributable to it.
Ms Bachelot's comments came as a 23-month-old toddler in Texas on Wednesday became the first death outside of Mexico resulting from having caught the H1N1 virus.
The same day, the World Health Organisation raised the level of its pandemic crisis alert system to five out of six, meaning a human-to-human transition of the disease has taken place in at least two countries and that a pandemic is now "imminent."
"It really is the whole of humanity that is under threat in a pandemic," said WHO director-general Margaret Chan when announcing the move.
She called on all countries to activate their pandemic plans and underlined that action should be taken with "increased urgency."
The flu – a mixture of swine, bird and human viruses – has been spreading in Europe in the last few days with ten cases now confirmed in Spain, five in the UK, three in Germany and one in Austria. France meanwhile has reported two "probable" ones.
In the US, the number of confirmed cases rose to 91 across 10 states, while Canada and New Zealand have confirmed more than 10 cases each. Two cases have also been confirmed in Israel.
The first case in South America was also confirmed on Wednesday, where a 27-year-old Argentine woman felt ill during a flight from California to Argentina via Mexico and Panama, and was then hospitalised in Peru.
Argentina and Cuba have already stopped flights to and from Mexico.
But the WHO's assistant director-general, Keiji Fukuda, was sceptical as to how effective restricting travel to Mexico would be.
"Instituting travel bans would really not be very effective, as the virus has already spread to several other countries," he was reported as saying by the BBC.
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