VILNIUS — The Ministry of Health declared over half of Lithuania’s municipalities epidemic areas Tuesday, officially fulfilling at least one criteria for a national pandemic.

A commission will meet at the Ministry of the Interior at 2 p.m. Tuesday to discuss whether or not the situation should be declared a national pandemic. Aside from having over 50 percent of municipalities epidemic areas — 34 have crossed that threshold — if 10 percent of the population is ill with the flu, that would ostensibly force the commission’s hand.

The Center for Communicable Diseases and AIDS has tested 235 positive cases of A/H1N1 since June, but at the recommendation of the World Health Organization, it has stopped testing to distinguish A/H1N1 from seasonal flu.

“Not everyone is getting tested,” Giedre Maksimaitytė, a health ministry representative, told Baltic Reports. “We are only testing problematic cases,” such as those in intensive care.

Maksimaitytė could not say what kind of methodology the commission would use to determine that ten percent of the population is ill if it has stopped testing for A/H1N1 universally.

“We have flu, swine flu, and other upper respiratory diseases,” she added.

Saulius Čeplinskas, director of the communicable disease center, told Baltic Reports last week that “ninety-eight percent” of cases in Lithuania are A/H1N1.

If a pandemic is declared, schools will be recommended to close and mass public gatherings would be discouraged. Hospitals would also receive some compensation for the higher volume of patients, and businesses on which the public depends, such as food stores or transportation, would have to continue working.

Maksimaitytė declined to say whether the ministry was leaning one way or the other on declaring a pandemic. She did say that Vytautas Bakasienas, chief epidemialogist at the communicable disease center, does support declaring a pandemic.

“But the decision will be made by this commission,” she added.