To travel or not to travel? A Swine Flu Dilemma

Fearing that their vacations could comprise of surf, sand and swine flu, potential travelers are turning to health organizations for guidance on whether to pack their bags or stay home. And while opinions from health officials have come thick and fast, their often contradictory advice doesn’t make it any easier to decide whether to fly or not to fly.

On Monday, the European Union’s health commissioner Androulla Vassiliou told reporters in Luxembourg that she was ‘’not worried at this stage’’ about a pandemic sweeping across Europe, but she urged travelers to avoid Mexico and the United States anyway. That prompted a swift rebuke from Richard Besser, the acting director of the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta, who rejected her advisory as ‘’quite premature’’. Even so, the CDC website ‘’recommends that U.S. travelers avoid all nonessential travel to Mexico”. As for the World Health Organization, it’s calling on nations to keep their borders open and to avoid restricting international travel, and emphasizes that a pandemic is not evitable. Despite that plea, Argentina and Cuba have suspended all flights from Mexico, and tour operators and airlines across the globe – including some based in Canada, Germany and the U.K. – have canceled flights and holiday packages to sunshine destinations like Cancún and Cozumel.

Available at < http://www.time.com/health/article/0,8599,1894660,00.html/ >,

visited on June 26, 2009.