At least 19 people in four European countries were Thursday morning confirmed to have been infected with swine flu while 155 cases were confirmed worldwide, a European health agency reported.
The confirmed European cases were in Britain, Germany, Spain and Austria, the Swedish-based European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) said, dpa reported.
In addition there were two suspected cases in France, the agency said. In all but one of the cases in Europe the people had visited Mexico.
The confirmed cases outside Europe included 26 in Mexico and seven deaths, 91 in the United States, 19 in Canada, 14 in New Zealand, two in Israel, two in Costa Rica and one in Peru, the ECDC said.
The ECDC tally did not include that of a 19-year-old man in Switzerland who was Thursday reported to be that country's first case of swine flu.
The ECDC late Wednesday issued a statement supporting the World Health Organization's decision to raise the pandemic alert level for the swine flu virus it prefers to call novel influenza virus A(H1N1).
The ECDC with headquarters in Sweden began to operate in 2005, and groups the bloc as well as several non-EU members.