Ms Roxon is considering advice on whether the nation's pandemic plan should be modified to allow alerts to be tailored to suit each state's and territory's public health situation.

However some infectious disease experts are suggesting that swine flu should be allowed to run its course and be treated like any other seasonal flu.

Professor Peter Collignon from ANU's School of Clinical Medicine says initial reports from Mexico suggested that swine flu was much more aggressive but other regions such as Los Angeles and Canada are now treating the virus as normal seasonal influenza.

Many are thought to agree with him - Professor Collignon says the public health system is at its limit as to what it can do to contain swine flu and it may be time to step up Australia's pandemic alert level from contain ™ to sustain ™.

While most cases of swine flu have been mild, a few people have been hospitalised and most experts expect the infection to remain mild but they say future deaths cannot be ruled out - 10 to 30% of the population can be expected to catch this flu variant over the coming flu season.

To date more than 15,000 people in 53 countries have tested positive to swine flu, this figure includes 99 swine flu-related deaths.