WHO says no signs of community H1N1 transmission

By Jonathan Lynn

GENEVA (Reuters) - The new H1N1 flu virus shows no signs of sustained person-to-person spread outside of North America where the infection first emerged, a top World Health Organization official said Monday.

Keiji Fukuda, acting WHO assistant director-general, told a news briefing it was too early to say whether the situation would stabilize or whether the virus would develop into a full-blown pandemic.

"We remain at phase 5," Fukuda said, referring to the agency's second-highest pandemic alert level. "It is still a confusing situation."

Fukuda defended the WHO's continued flow of information on the outbreak which some critics say has created unnecessary panic and disruption.

And he said it was not possible for the WHO to publish a scientific assessment of whether the new illness, widely known as swine flu, was mild or severe, as the disease kept changing.

"We know that we are seeing things change on an almost daily basis," Fukuda said.

"This is unfolding. It is still going on and we are still evaluating -- we are evaluating the clinical features, we are evaluating the epidemiology and the spread. We will continue to evaluate what is the impact on both people and countries."

Different people and different countries had different perceptions of what made a disease severe, he said.