BERLIN (AP) — The World Health Organization warned Wednesday that the swine flu outbreak is moving closer to becoming a pandemic, as the United States reported the first death outside of Mexico, and Germany and Austria became the latest European nations hit by the disease.

WHO flu chief Dr. Keiji Fukuda told reporters that developments in the disease were moving the agency closer to pushing its pandemic alert level up a notch to phase 5 — indicating widespread human-to-human transmission and an "imminent" pandemic. Phase 6, the highest in the scale, is for a full-scale pandemic.

"It's clear that the virus is spreading, and we don't see any evidence that it is slowing down at this point," Fukuda said as WHO was finishing a "scientific review" of the disease.

"What we're trying to do right now is to make absolutely sure that we're dealing with sustained transmission in at least two or more countries," he said. This would indicate whether the alert should be moved up from phase 4, which means the virus is being passed among people but that a pandemic may yet be avoided.

Mexico is believed to be the epicenter of the disease, with authorities there suspecting swine flu has killed more than 150 people and sickened over 2,400.

While no other country has emerged as a major source of sickness, Fukuda noted a cluster of infections largely among students in New York, and said the situation there was being closely examined.

But he said institutions such as schools and hospitals are typical breeding grounds for flu viruses and so "we are also looking for is whether we see transmission of this virus out in the community itself," Fukuda said during a telephone news conference.

Raising the alert level to phase 5 would tell the world nations to finalize plans for dealing with large outbreaks.

Fukuda said it was too soon to know how severe a pandemic might be.

"We just don't know what the future is going to hold," he said, noting that the 1918 pandemic started mild in the spring, was quiet during the summer, but then exploded into a much more severe form by autumn. In the end, the so-called Spanish flu infected as many as one-third of the world's population and killed about 40 million people.

WHO, which only adds to its case tally when it receives notification from countries, said there were 114 confirmed cases in seven countries, but reports were still coming in. The agency was rushing to organize its third emergency meeting in a week — perhaps as early as Wednesday night or Thursday morning.

In the United States, Dr. Richard Besser, the acting chief of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said 91 cases have now been confirmed in 10 states, and health officials there reported Wednesday that a 23-month-old Mexican boy had died in Texas from the disease.

Across Europe, Germany confirmed three swine flu cases and Austria one, while the number of confirmed cases rose to five in Britain and 10 in Spain.

Germany's national disease control center, the Robert Koch Institute, said the country's three cases include a 22-year-old woman hospitalized in Hamburg, a man in his late 30s at a hospital in Regensburg, north of Munich, and a 37-year-old woman from another Bavarian town. All three had recently returned from Mexico.

Austria's health ministry said a 28-year-old woman who recently returned from a monthlong trip to Guatemala via Mexico City and Miami has the virus but is recovering.

In Britain, Prime Minister Gordon Brown said health officials were ordering extra medicine and "several million more" face masks, putting in enhanced airport checks and mailing swine flu information leaflets to every household in Britain.

In addition to a couple in Scotland who got swine flu on their Mexican honeymoon, new British cases included a 12-year-old girl in the southwest English town of Torbay.

Brown said her school had been closed as a precaution, and said the other two cases were adults in London and in Birmingham. All three had visited Mexico, were responding well to antiviral drugs, he said.

European Union transport ministers met in the Czech Republic — which holds the EU presidency — to discuss a French proposal to suspend flights to Mexico, but decided to wait for a meeting of European health chiefs before acting.

"We, as transport ministers, don't want the travel system to collapse," said Petr Bendl, the Czech minister. But he added, "We're ready to take measures to prevent (the flu) from spreading."

The U.S., the EU and other countries have discouraged nonessential travel to Mexico. Cuba suspended all regular and charter flights from Mexico to the island, but was still allowing airlines to return travelers to Mexico.

New Zealand's number of swine flu cases rose to 14, with all but one of them among a school group that recently returned from Mexico. The students were responding well to antiviral drugs and in voluntary quarantine at home, while New Zealand has 44 other possible cases, with tests under way, officials said.

Mexico was taking drastic measures to fight the outbreak. It closed all archaeological sites and allowed restaurants in the capital to only serve takeout food in an aggressive bid to stop gatherings where the virus can spread. Schools remained closed until at least May 6.

A regional beach soccer championship in Mexico was postponed, and all Mexican first-division soccer games this weekend will be played with no audiences. Cruise lines were avoiding Mexican ports, and holiday tour groups were canceling holiday charter flights there.

But Egypt's reaction appeared the most far-reaching as its government ordered the slaughter of all pigs in the country as a precaution, even though no swine flu cases have been reported there. Egypt's overwhelmingly Muslim population does not eat pork, but farmers raise up to 350,000 pigs for its Christian minority.

"At this point we do not see any evidence that people are getting infected from pigs," WHO's Fukuda said. "We do not have any evidence to suggest that pork meat and those sorts of products pose a risk to people."