Mad cow disease and avian flu may have come and gone, but another disease has since taken its place in the media spotlight.

Swine flu, which originated in Mexico, has continued to spread rapidly within the United States and beyond, raising the World Health Organization’s disease threat level to pandemic and prompting an e-mail to Saint Louis University students warning about its symptoms and how to prevent it.

Missouri reported its first suspected case of swine flu Wednesday in Platte County, located in the Kansas City, Mo., metro area. Nine suspected cases have been reported in Illinois, including a University of Loyola Chicago student. Because of the growing threat of swine flu, SLU’s Pandemic Response Planning Committee has begun meeting daily. The committee, overseen by the Safety and Emergency Preparedness department, was founded several years ago. The committee is responsible for keeping the University community in the loop about dangerous contagious diseases and for developing a method for handling the situation if an outbreak should occur, according to Dean of Students Scott Smith. The committee includes representatives from across the University, including SLUCare.

An e-mail addressing swine flu was sent out to the SLU community on Wednesday as a result.

“Communication is really important,” said Steven Cummings, director of Employee Health and acting chairman of the PRPC. “It’s important for people to have the resources to get the right information.”

Despite the disease’s rapid spread, Cummings said that SLU students shouldn’t yet be overly concerned.

“There’s no need to be panicked, but people should be on alert,” he said.

He reiterated the importance of washing hands regularly, saying that it’s “one of the simplest things but is also very effective in controlling . something like this.”

The World Health Association has since upgraded swine flu’s risk level to five, the second highest rating, based on the fact that it is extremely contagious and has been reported in nine countries, with 148 cases total (the majority of which are in the U.S.), according to CNN. Eight deaths have been reported in the U.S. and Mexico as of press time, though it is important to note that the common flu kills anywhere from 250,000 to 500,000 worldwide every year.

One issue with the swine flu is that it isn’t covered by this year’s flu vaccine, meaning that even those who received the vaccine are not protected. This is a problem for which researchers at SLU are working to find an answer.

Robert Belshe, director of the SLU Center for Vaccine Development, reported a breakthrough in the development of a universal flu vaccine on Tuesday. Currently, a different seasonal flu vaccine is created every year.

A universal vaccine combined with a seasonal one would be able to help protect against strains of the flu, even though they change and mutate every year. It would also be helpful in the event of a deadly pandemic.