Swine flu threat decreases as alert level rises to six

The ministry of health has announced it has raised the H1N1 swine flu alert level from four to six.

Despite the counterintuitive increase, alert level six is when the danger of the disease goes down and the risk of it spreading also decreases.

Dr Ibrahim Yasir, director general of health services, said “The disease has not spread in the way we predicted it might. We expected the disease to spread [more] with the start of the academic year and people returning from abroad.”

He said the spread of the disease had been controlled by the hard work of people in the health sector, “the priority given to the pandemic by the government and the awareness of the public.