WHO to call on nations with high rates of swine flu to move away from testing all suspected cases

The World Health Organization said on Tuesday (7 July) that with the A/H1N1 influenza pandemic evolving rapidly, it plans to issue new guidelines for nations with large infection rates, advising them to move away from conducting laboratory testing on all suspected cases and to focus instead on monitoring big trends in the spread of disease.

Keiji Fukuda, the WHO’s interim assistant director general, said that because the number of cases had increased in so many countries “it’s very hard to keep up” and added that in the next few days the agency would be issuing “updated surveillance recommendations to countries.” This should also help ease …