There are three more confirmed cases of swine flu in British Columbia, raising the number of cases in the province to six.
Across Canada there are 19 confirmed cases, including four in Nova Scotia and two in Alberta.
The B.C. Centre for Disease Control say all new cases within the province are in the Metro Vancouver region.
All but one of the six current cases is linked to people who have recently been traveling in Mexico. The link in the sixth case is still unclear.
Victoria resident Michelle Bossi was confirmed with swine flu on Tuesday. She became sick in Cancun late last week while traveling with friends and sought medical attention. The 30-year-old was advised by doctors in both Canada and Mexico that she only had bronchitis.
Bossi's father, Roger Friesen, said Canadian hospitals were not equipped to deal with the growing epidemic.
"She had every textbook symptom of the swine flu, they knew there was a swine flu epidemic or at least symptoms going around and yet they gave all the tests, told her she wasn't contagious and told her to go home," Friesen said.
"That shows a complete disregard for public safety. I'd like to see them take responsibility for their actions."
Symptoms of the flu include fever, exhaustion, coughing, muscle and joint pain and sore throat.
The Centre for Disease Control says it is ready to deal with any flu cases that may be diagnosed here and the province has a large stock of anti-viral medicine that will protect against the disease.
The World Health Organization raised its pandemic alert level to Phase 5 from Phase 4 Wednesday afternoon, saying the probability of a pandemic is "high to certain."
"Influenza pandemics must be taken seriously precisely because of their capacity to spread rapidly through every country in the world," Margaret Chan, WHO director-general, told reporters Wednesday.
"On the positive side, the world is better prepared for an influenza pandemic than at any time in history."
Canada's biggest challenge
Canada's biggest challenge in dealing with the swine flu outbreak is to track down the thousands of Canadians who returned from Mexico in the last few months and may have contracted the disease, says one expert.
All cases are the same strain as the swine flu virus identified in Mexico and the U.S., and all the Canadian cases have been mild.
Dr. Donald Low, an infection disease specialist at Mt. Sinai Hospital in Toronto, said the challenge here is to locate and identify Canadian cases in order to get a handle on how widespread the disease is in this country.
"We're seeing so many of those individuals returning from Mexico who are sick," Low told CTV's Canada AM.
He said the goal is to track down those who are infected, give them the information and instruction they need to avoid infecting others, and to collect specimens to "get a sense of how much disease is out there."
He said it's too late to contain the disease, and efforts have turned to mitigating the damage and reducing the impact on people's health.
"If you can slow down the spread of this disease you can cope much better with it when it does happen," he said.
Swine flu is believed to have killed more than 150 people in Mexico. On Wednesday morning, the U.S. confirmed the death of a 23-month-old boy from swine flu -- the first swine flu death outside of Mexico.
However, the child was from Mexico, and it is believed he contacted the swine flu there.
Low said that's because the disease is much more widespread in Mexico than in other countries. However, he said the ratio of people in Mexico who have recovered from swine flu is much higher than the number of those who have died from it.
He said only the very sick are being identified in Mexico as having the disease, making the outbreak appear more severe than it really is.
In actual fact, Low said, the death-rate is very similar to that of seasonal influenza.
"When you infect one million, two million, three million people with seasonal influenza, some of those individuals are going to be at greater risk of having a bad outcome, and they die as a result of that," Low said.
Nova Scotia cases drop
There were four confirmed cases in Nova Scotia, all from the same private high school.
Many other students at King's-Edgehill School in Windsor had been put in quarantine. On Wednesday headmaster Joseph Seagram said 17 students had been cleared from quarantine and another eight nearly had the medical go-ahead.
The school became one of the first places in Canada to announce confirmed cases of swine flu on Sunday. Four students had tested positive after returning from a trip top Mexico.
Seagram says there are seven more students in quarantine but the virus had yet to spread past the original four cases.
"For me, no news is good news," he told The Canadian Press.
The cases at the school were all reported to much milder than the strain in Mexico.
Travel advisory
Canada has issued a travel advisory against all non-essential travel to Mexico.
"As of April 27, 2009, travellers from Canada are recommended to postpone elective or non-essential travel to Mexico until further notice," stated the advisory.
The U.S., France, Britain and Germany are also warning against unnecessary travel to Mexico.
Following the travel advisory, Canada's biggest travel companies cancelled trips to Mexico, including Transat AT, which will bring all employees and customers back to Canada.
The company said that flights to Mexico will be cancelled until at least June 1 and will impact people who booked trips with Air Transat, Transat Holidays, Nolitours, Vacances Transat and Look Voyages.
Air Canada and Air Canada Vacations also announced Tuesday they will suspend all operations to Cancun, Cozumel and Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, until June 1. The airline said, however, it will keep its flights to Mexico City going.
Do you have swine flu?
Have you been diagnosed with swine flu? Do you know someone who has? If so, we want to hear from you. Contact CTV News at bcassign@ctv.ca.
