Swine Flu take 5

Again with GMTV, but this time they have an actual official from WHO on the line and the first question is whether the WHO are going to upgrade Swine Flu to pandemic. The reply - There's going to be a meeting to see if if merits an increase to phase 6 and that the WHO don't like using the word pandemic as people don't understand what it means in the WHO context.

Uh-huh so no correction that this is in fact currently a pandemic?

Once again this is the official WHO phase chart ignore the fact it's filed under avian influenza (bird flu) the phase stages are identical. Note that phases 5 and 6 are clumped together as pandemic. Sigh okay in the descriptions it does call Phase 6 the "Pandemic phase" and stage 5 that a "pandemic is imminent" but if that's the case why does the chart have "Phases 5-6 / Pandemic" written on it?

The CDC lists the WHO phases with 6 being pandemic and 5 as the highest level of pandemic alert.

However the WHO's own phase document (currently broken Google html cache here) doesn't differentiate between the actions of phases 5 and 6.

So it's no wonder that the WHO don't want to bandy around words like pandemic it seems they can't even communicate accurately what they even mean by it.

Anyway I'll stick to my guns Phase 5 is a pandemic, Phase 6 is just bigger.