Word: travels
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...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 for 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...
...much for a relaxing summer break. Andrew Nolan, 30, a lawyer living in London, had planned to fly to Los Angeles on April 30. But the conflicting travel advisories left him so uneasy that he decided to stay put. "If these large international bodies are having difficulty deciding where it's safe to travel, I thought it was better to cancel," he says of the trip he started planning two months ago. "I'm in no way assured that they understand the full extent of the epidemic, or that they have it under control...
...Those concerns will take center stage on Thursday when health ministers from the 27 E.U. states convene at an emergency conference in Luxembourg to define and coordinate a response - and a unified travel advisory. "During these meetings we will ask our European colleagues to consider the suspension of flights going to Mexico," France's Health Minister Roselyne Bachelot told reporters after meeting with French president Nicholas Sarkozy to discuss the flu scare. But France won't advocate suspending flights returning from Mexico, as that would strand thousands of passengers, leaving them in a scramble to find other ways...
...those in the tourism industry, discussing restrictions simply doesn't fly. The world travel sector is already experiencing its first contraction since 2003, when the outbreak of SARS in Asia decimated tourism revenues. Michael O'Leary, chief executive of discount airline RyanAir, drew criticism on Tuesday for publicly suggesting that only the world's poorest people will succumb to swine flu, despite the fact that two middle-class Scottish newlyweds have been isolated in a hospital for several days after having tested positive for the H1N1 virus. "It is a tragedy only for people living in slums in Asia...
...threat of travel restrictions spreads, it's those kinds of inconveniences - not health concerns - that put some people off their vacation plans. Yvonne Worth, 50, a freelance editor in London, says she's debating whether to travel to New York and Massachusetts to visit old friends because she worries the airline will cancel her flight. "If I book a ticket and end up losing it because of travel restrictions, I may not get my money back," she says. "Maybe I'll go see somebody in Amsterdam instead." Apparently not even a deadly virus can kill the travel bug in some...