WHO Refining Guidelines for Pandemic Alert Phases

This article discusses how the World Health Organization (WHO) is refining its guidelines for a global influenza pandemic alert to make them clearer.
This follows communication from the agency that they were about to raise the level of alert from its current three on a six-point scale after a family in Indonesia died from the virus, which shook financial markets and increased anxiety that the virus was becoming better at infecting people.

The WHO subsequently said tests showed that there had been no significant genetic changes and that the virus had not become more dangerous to humans.
"It was highlighted last week that there is some confusion over these phases, what we mean when we go from phase three to phase four," WHO spokeswoman Maria Cheng told a briefing. The revised guidelines would aim to make the language "more acceptable (and) understandable," she said.

Level three means some very limited human-to-human transmission of bird flu has occurred, while level four signals evidence of increased human-to-human transmission. Phase five would signal evidence of "significant human to human transmission", while six would signal onset of a pandemic, which the WHO has warned could take millions of lives. The WHO is making the changes to the guidelines so that people understand that the WHO is looking to detect any change in how the virus is transmitted.