By Catherine Bremer
MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - Mexico began shutting down all non-essential work and services on Thursday to slow the spread of a new flu strain as officials urged increased worldwide precautions against an imminent pandemic.
The World Health Organisation said it would remain for now at its current alert level -- one step below full pandemic -- and that it would no longer refer to the H1N1 virus as "swine flu" to appease beleaguered meat producers.
New confirmed flu cases were reported in the United States, Canada and Europe. Almost all infections outside of Mexico have been mild, only a handful of patients have required hospital treatment, and most global markets have shrugged off concerns.
U.S. officials said new cases were occurring. About 300 schools closed across the country over possible infections.
Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said the United States will spend $251 million (169.5 million pounds) to buy 13 million more courses of flu medicine and send 400,000 doses of treatment to Mexico.
"The 13 million additional treatment courses that we will purchase will allow us to replenish our national stockpile and further ensure we are prepared to provide the American people with the treatments they may need to stay healthy," Sebelius said in a statement.
'NO SAFER PLACE THAN HOME'
The U.S. government has stockpiled about 50 million courses of antiviral drugs and state stockpiles across the country include an additional 23 million courses. The United States began moving the 400,000 treatment courses -- less than 1 percent of the U.S. stockpile -- to Mexico on Thursday.
Canada recorded its first case of person-to-person transmission of the virus.
In Mexico, the worst hit country with up to 176 deaths, President Felipe Calderon told government offices and private businesses not crucial to the economy to stop work beginning on Friday.
"There is no safer place than your own home to avoid being infected with the flu virus," Calderon said in his first televised address since the outbreak started.
In Mexico City, where the virus has already brought public life to a standstill, some were sceptical while others vowed not to take part in the shutdown.
"Closing businesses is not right and not fair. What are we going to live on? Air?" said Andres Garcia, who works in a tailor shop in the old colonial centre of the capital.
Mexico's assembly-for-export factories known as maquiladoras, a pillar of the economy, and some of the country's mines said they would defy the shutdown call.
With its tourism industry savaged, shoppers staying home and exports to the United States in steep decline, Mexico could find itself in the longest, deepest recession it has seen in years, according to analysts.
Mexico's peso was hammered by flu fears on Thursday and its stock market slid. But most global markets were taking the flu news in stride as traders focussed on hopes that a deep U.S. recession may be nearing its end.
109 CASES IN U.S.
"The information that we have at this stage is it is a relatively minor (economic) event," International Monetary Fund chief economist Olivier Blanchard said, although he warned that some countries and sectors could see "quite dramatic" fallout from the outbreak.
The WHO and flu experts say they do not yet know enough about the new strain to say how deadly it actually is, how far it might spread and how long any potential pandemic may last.
Flu epidemics generally last a few weeks or months in any single community, and can pass around the world in one or two waves over 18 months to two years before fading out.
U.S. officials have reported 109 confirmed swine flu infections in at least 11 states and the only death recorded outside of Mexico -- a Mexican toddler visiting Texas.
The White House said on Thursday that a member of the advance team that went with Obama to Mexico had also come down with flu-like symptoms and passed them to his family, although all of them had recovered.
Normal seasonal flu kills between 250,000 and 500,000 people around the globe in an average year, including about 36,000 in the United States.
Worldwide, 11 countries have reported confirmed cases of the H1N1 strain, with the Netherlands the latest to join the list.
Switzerland also confirmed its first case on Thursday in a man returning from Mexico. Peru's health minister told Reuters that further tests had determined that a suspected case was not the new flu strain.
Flu preparations were intensified after the WHO raised its alert level to phase 5, the last step before a pandemic.
The WHO recommended all countries track any suspect cases and ensure medical workers dealing with them wear protective masks and gloves. But it stopped short of recommending travel restrictions, border closures or any limitation on the movement of people, goods or services.
Keiji Fukuda, acting WHO assistant director-general, told reporters there was no new evidence to prompt the agency to move to its top alert level which would signal a global pandemic was under way.
Fukuda said Swiss drugmaker Roche was stepping up production of Tamiflu to deal with the infection at that the
WHO had released some of its own stockpiles of the drug -- known generically as oseltamivir and proven effective against the new strain -- to developing countries deemed most at need, including Mexico.
The World Bank also announced it was beginning to transfer flu emergency funds to Mexico and Argentina.
(Additional reporting by Maggie Fox, Steve Holland, Lesley Wroughton, Julie Steenhuysen, Jason Lange, Alistair Bell, Helen Popper, Laura MacInnis, Stephanie Nebehay, Robin Emmot, Cynthia Johnson, Phil Stewart and Yoko Nishikawa; writing by Andrew Quinn and Dan Whitcomb; editing by Mohammad Zargham)
