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WHO to rewrite rules for declaring a pandemic |
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Dr. Keiji Fukuda, the deputy director general of the World Health Organization (WHO) in a statement has said that he could not predict exactly what the new rules would be, but they would include a “substantial risk of harm to people,” not just the geographic spread of a relatively benign virus. The six-point system, was created in 2005 when the threat was H5N1 avian flu, which has a fatality rate of about 60 percent. But the system does not take into account a virus’s lethality, and in the current outbreak,
some countries have complained that the warning system created panic and pressure for border closings, even though the strain was less
deadly.
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