The number of confirmed swine-flu cases in Canada has increased by nearly 200, a federal count showed Wednesday.
As of Wednesday, 1,118 confirmed cases of H1N1 influenza had been reported to the Public Health Agency of Canada, up from 921 on Monday.
The total includes 143 newly confirmed cases in Ontario, 22 in Quebec, 13 each in Alberta and Saskatchewan, five in British Columbia and one in Nova Scotia.
In comparison, Ontario reported 58 new confirmed cases of H1N1 flu between May 22 and May 25.
Globally, three more deaths and 444 newly confirmed cases of swine flu have been reported, the World Health Organization said Wednesday. Of the new cases, 367 and all three deaths were in Mexico, the WHO said in its daily update.
Bahrain and Singapore were the latest countries reporting new cases.
As of Wednesday, there have been 13,398 laboratory-confirmed cases and 95 deaths overall, the agency said.
The WHO's pandemic alert stands at Phase 5, meaning a global outbreak is imminent.
Officials are looking for signs the disease has become established in a region outside North America as they weigh whether to raise the alert to Phase 6, indicating a global pandemic is underway.
Severity may be factor
Normally, the alert scale doesn't consider the severity of an illness itself, but the Geneva-based agency said it would consider adding that as a factor, if experts agreed.
Elsewhere on Wednesday, the World Organization for Animal Health said cases of humans spreading the H1N1 virus to pigs are more likely to occur but it is not a major concern for herds.
"We would not be surprised if we have other cases like this in other countries," Bernard Vallat, director general of the animal health organization, told a news conference at the group's meeting in Paris.
"But it is not a problem because we know pigs are not a big player in the epidemiological spread of the disease."
On May 2, a top official with the Canadian Food Inspection Agency announced that a farm worker with swine flu who had travelled to Mexico was thought to have infected about 200 pigs in Alberta — the first such reported case in the world.
The H1N1 swine flu virus has origins in humans, birds and pigs.
The WHO has ruled out any risk of infection from consuming pork. Swine flu — like all influenza viruses — is not a food-borne illness.
