A toddler tested positive for swine flu, the third such reported case in the Kingdom, hours after the World Health Organization declared a pandemic. The three-and-a-half-year-old boy, along with his family, arrived in Riyadh from the US Sunday, Dr. Abdullah Al-Rabeah, Health Minister, said. The toddler was checked into the Armed Forces Hospital in Riyadh on Wednesday when he began showing symptoms of the A(H1N1) virus. Medical tests showed he had been infected with the virus, Dr. Rabeah said. “The boy is currently undergoing medical procedures that are taken in such cases,” he said. A Saudi student diagnosed with swine flu was on Wednesday discharged from a hospital after treatment while a Filipina nurse returning to Saudi Arabia from a holiday had also tested positive for the flu last week. Authorities in Taif announced that the two Indian female nurses in Raniah suspected of contacting swine flu are free from the disease. The swine flu crisis has escalated into the world's first influenza pandemic in 40 years, the WHO declared Thursday, after infecting tens of thousands of people in 74 countries. WHO Director General Margaret Chan said the declaration of a “moderate” pandemic should not spark panic and did not mean the death toll from it, which currently stands at 144, would rise sharply. The UN body said it was not recommending the closure of borders nor restrictions in movement of people, goods and services. But it warned the virus was spreading beyond the Americas where it was first detected in April. “We will be raising our pandemic alert level to level six; and this means that the world is moving into the early days of its first influenza pandemic in the 21st century,” Chan said after a meeting of scientific experts. “At this time, the global assessment is that we are seeing a moderate pandemic,” she added. The WHO raised its six-phase alert level to five at the end of April, indicating an imminent pandemic. The latest WHO figures show that the number of reported A(H1N1) infections has reached 28,774 in 74 countries, including 144 deaths. The vast majority of the deaths have been in Mexico and no deaths have been announced outside the Americas. The declaration comes amid growing evidence that the virus, which originated in Mexico two months ago, is now being widely transmitted between humans in Asia and Europe as well as the Americas. The last flu pandemic came after an outbreak of the H3N2 viral strain from 1968-69, which originated in Hong Kong, and went on to kill up to two million people.
