MOSCOW, May 19 (RIA Novosti) - Forty countries have reported a total of 9,830 cases of A/H1N1 infection, known as swine flu, including 79 deaths, the World Health Organization said on Tuesday.
The number of infected has risen by about a thousand people in the past 24 hours, and five new deaths have occurred.
"Unlike the avian virus, the new H1N1 virus spreads very easily from person to person, spreads rapidly within a country once it establishes itself, and is spreading rapidly to new countries," WHO head Margaret Chan said, adding that the pattern was likely to continue.
The organization said earlier on Tuesday that about 4.9 million single doses of the A/H1N1 vaccine could be produced worldwide. However, one third of the world population could become infected in the case of a global pandemic, said WHO's flu chief, Keiji Fukuda.
"Manufacturing capacity for antiviral drugs and influenza vaccines is finite and insufficient for a world with 6.8 billion inhabitants," Margaret Chan said.
Human A/H1N1 infections have been officially confirmed in the following countries:
The U.S. - 5,123 cases, five deaths
Mexico - 3,648 cases, 72 deaths
Canada - 496 cases, one death
Costa Rica - nine cases, one death
Japan - 159 cases
Spain - 103 cases
The U.K. - 102 cases
Panama - 59 cases
France - 14 cases
Germany - 14 cases
Colombia - 11 cases
Italy - nine cases
New Zealand - eight cases
Brazil - eight cases
Israel - seven cases
China - seven cases
El Salvador - 6 cases
Belgium - five cases
Chile - four cases
The Netherlands, Cuba, South Korea, Guatemala and Sweden have each reported three officially confirmed cases of the human A/H1N1 infection.
Norway, Finland, Malaysia and Thailand have reported two cases each.
Single cases have been detected in Argentina, Australia, India, Switzerland, Turkey, Ireland, Austria, Denmark, Poland, Portugal and Ecuador.
