FIGURES released by the World Health Organisation on Monday meanwhile had reported the death toll from the pandemic at 311 and total infections at 70,893 - up more than 10,000 on the figures release the previous Friday.

US researchers said in a new study that the virus responsible for the Spanish flu in 1918 created a viral dynasty that persists today.

The research, published on Tuesday by the New England Journal of Medicine, said not only did the Spanish flu's H1N1 virus cause tens of millions of deaths in 1918, it was also transmitted from humans to pigs during the pandemic and continues to evolve today.

'The 1918-1919 influenza pandemic was a defining event in the history of public health,' said Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institutes of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and a co-author of the study.

Jeffrey Taubenberger, the senior investigator at NIAID's Laboratory of Infectious Diseases, said all human-adapted influenza A viruses were descendents, direct or indirect, of that founding virus.

'Thus we can be said to be living in a pandemic era that began in 1918,' he added. -- AFP