Symptoms and spread of swine flu

Symptoms:

Symptoms range from mild to severe. The usual presentation is a sudden onset of fever, cough, sore throat, nasal congestion with nasal discharge along with headache, body ache and severe weakness. Patients can also have symptoms like vomiting, diarrhoea, chills, breathing difficulty and, rarely, conjunctivitis. Severe disease presents with pneumonia and respiratory failure resulting in death.

A chronic medical condition in a person can result in the worsening of his underlying symptoms.

Spread:

Influenza spreads easily as respiratory droplets containing the virus are transmitted when the infected person coughs, sneezes or talks. It can also spread via a contaminated fomite or by touching an infected person without following the necessary precautions. The infected person is potentially contagious for up to 7 days following the onset of illness. Unlike seasonal flu, swine flu has affected mainly children of all ages and healthy young adults.
It spreads due to close contact with any affected person. So the people who have visited the affected countries are screened at airports of countries that are not affected. In spite of this, the swine flu has spread its wings over many countries.

In this era of frequent and easy travel, the spread should have been more rapid and wider than what is actually present now. The reason that the spread has been controlled to a large extent is the immediate action taken by the governments of different countries. Also the improvement in health care has helped by quarantining the affected patients and treating them effectively.