Geneva  - The World Health Organization (WHO) said Thursday that 41 countries have officially reported 11,168 cases of influenza A(H1N1), known also as swine flu, including 86 deaths.

However, the WHO's chief of health security, Keiji Fukuda, said the numbers were becoming more "irrelevant."

"We will begin to de-emphasize the numbers as they will increasingly not reflect what's going on," he told reporters.

Some countries have implied their priority goal was not to tally all cases but to track its geographic spread and severity.

Also, as the virus was likely only in early stages of its spread, Fukuda said, laboratories would not have the capacity to track each case further down the line.

So far, the virus has shown itself to be relatively mild.

Fukuda noted that most cases were in people younger than 60 years old and "about half are people who are young and healthy with no underlying medical conditions."

Regarding the WHO's decision not to move its pandemic alert system from the current penultimate Phase 5 to the highest Phase 6, Fukuda said the organization was not seeing the criteria needed, namely a spread at a community level in a second region of the world.

North America has so far been the only area to show community level spread.

Moreover, he said the main job of the system was to alert people and it had succeeded in doing so.

Margaret Chan, the director-general of the WHO, earlier this week heard from various countries that they wanted more flexible criteria for moving to Phase 6, which would include matters like severity.

Chan said she would follow the delegates' request.

While the ultimate decision would not be made solely on severity or spread, Fukuda did imply that there would be flexibility, which would take into account the effect of such a declaration on populations.

He estimated a vaccine might be ready for production at the end of June, but that it could several more months before pharmaceutical companies were able to go into full-scale production.

The United States had 5,764 cases, with nine deaths, while Mexico had 3,892 infections, including 75 deaths. Canada had 719 cases, with one death.

Japan reported 294 cases, making it the hardest hit outside North America. In Europe, Spain had the highest number of infections - 113 cases - and Britain had 112.

WHO officials have said poorer countries may not have the resources to detect all cases of the new virus.

The 193 WHO member states who attended the World Health Assembly in Geneva, spent a significant portion of their time discussing swine flu over the past week.

The annual assembly ended Friday. (dpa)