GENEVA (AP) - The World Health Organization began to ship 2.4 million treatments of anti-flu drugs to 72 needy countries Tuesday,

and its flu chief said the swine flu epidemic was still spreading.

WHO flu chief Keiji Fukuda said new infections were among the 405 confirmed swine-flu cases reported to WHO in the last 24 hours.

"We are seeing testing of specimens that were collected from previous infections and then the laboratory work is catching up to it," Fukuda said. "But we’re also seeing new infections occurring."

"So, there’s both of these things going on simultaneously," he told reporters.

The countries getting Tamiflu included Mexico, Afghanistan,

Angola, Bhutan, Bolivia, Eritrea, Haiti, Moldova, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Uganda and Zimbabwe, among others.

The drugs are from a stock of 5 million treatments of Tamiflu that manufacturer Roche Holding AG donated in 2005 and 2006, WHO spokeswoman Fadela Chaib said. They were being shipped from Geneva and Basel in Switzerland, Maryland in the U.S. and Dubai in the United Arab Emirates.

The global body says there are now 1,490 cases and 30 confirmed deaths from the swine flu epidemic. Of those, 822 cases and 29 deaths were in Mexico; the United States had 403 cases and 1 death;

Canada had 140 cases, Spain 57, Britain 27, Germany nine, New Zealand six and Italy five. Israel and France had four cases each,

Korea and El Salvador had two each, and Austria, Hong Kong, Costa Rica, Colombia, Denmark, Ireland, the Netherlands, Portugal and Switzerland had one case each.