UPDATE Midday: EU health commissioner warns against all non-essential trips to affected areas - but stops short of mentioning Spain.
As a global issue, the Swine Flu outbreak of 2009 has the potential to not only knock the economic crisis off the headlines for a few weeks but have a big impact on travel companies.
We may even be completely underestimating its threat and the illness could become a pandemic (depending on which media source you read) very quickly.
Already countries are moving to establish zones to deal with any reported cases.
But here are facts:
In Mexico there are around 1,600 suspected cases of Swine Flu. There are reports of people falling ill in Canada, the US, New Zealand, Spain, Australia and Israel.
However, of the reported 100-odd deaths in Mexico only 20 are confirmed as officially being as a result of the new strain [BBC].
Neverthelees, health officials and experts are already warning the public about what to do, what not to do, etc.
Inevitably this has had a dramatic impact on travel stocks as the markets opening in the UK this morning.
British Airways shares were down around 7.5% within 30 minutes of the opening trade on the London Stock Exchange.
Carnival, which has a big interests in the Caribbean and Mexico, slumped by a similar figure.
Other travel firms were also hit in the early markets. Nineteen of the 20 stocks on the Travolution Index fell sharply.
So although travel shares have been performing quite well in recent weeks (up around 20% on levels in mid-March), the Swine Flu threat is clearly making investors extremely jittery.
SARS lives long in the memory...
There are some who suggest that it was only when SARS was added into the period containing the dot-com crash that travel firms really started tanking in terms of financial stability and investment value.
Therefore, the parallels with the current day are terrifying.
Let's jsut hope the Swine Flu outbreak is either being hyped by the media or can be quickly contained.
I think the swine flue happened in very bad time, I just hope it will be controlled soon the fears go away.
As with everyting in life it is best to be prepared. Here is a link to the CDC for information on the Travel restrictions. http://pfx.me/NP
It's very hard to know what to believe at the moment. This is the last thing our struggling travel industry needs, but containment is key to a pandemic causing long-standing chaos.
We've given the most up-to-date advice available to customers on the Auto Europe blog, but as the goal posts are constantly changing, it's very hard to keep up.