SINGAPOREANS must be mentally ready for the likely spread of Influenza A (H1N1) throughout the community, Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan said on Saturday.

Thanks to containment measures, luck and prompt reporting by the victims, it is an achievement that community spread has not occurred.

But it is unlikely this situation will remain unchanged.

Said Mr Khaw: 'We will try very hard to contain it but we must be mentally prepared that, at some stage, there will be community spread, not just in Singapore but all over the place.'

Speaking to reporters on the sidelines of a hospital event on Saturday, Mr Khaw also said that the Ministry of Health's director of medical services, Professor K. Satku, and his team have started work to study the genome of the virus from samples taken here.

The team, comprising researchers and doctors from both the Genome Institute of Singapore (GIS) and the public health sector, was appointed late last month, just six weeks after H1N1 first hit the world's headlines.

'Now we have 14 patients so we have a lot more samples to look at,' said Mr Khaw.