GENEVA/TOKYO: The new flu strain is spreading widely in the United States and Japan and is likely to circulate worldwide, health officials said on Monday. The H1N1 flu outbreak has put the world on the brink of a pandemic and ministers and experts were meeting in Geneva to discuss how to fight the virus with vaccines and drugs. "The outbreak is not over," senior U.S. official Richard Besser said at the World Health Organisation's (WHO) World Health Assembly. Japan confirmed on Monday that 125 people, many of whom had not been abroad, had been infected with the new strain after New York recorded its first death from the virus and Chile reported its first two cases. Forty countries have confirmed cases of the strain. Almost all the 74 deaths have been in Mexico.