Although the pace of new H1N1 infections seemingly slowed on Saturday — with a total of 195 cases reported in the United States and 793 worldwide, and a few even turning up in pigs — a World Health Organization official said he thought that the agency’s infectious disease alert level ultimately would be raised to its highest point.

“At the present time, I would still propose that a pandemic is imminent because we are seeing the disease spread,” Michael Ryan, the agency’s director of global alert and response, said in a Geneva news conference.

“We have to expect that Phase 6 will be reached; we have to hope that it is not,” he said.

The level will be raised when the agency sees evidence of sustained person-to-person transmission of the virus outside North America. So far, he emphasized, that has not occurred, with the exception of a handful of cases.

On Monday, the agency raised the alert level to Phase 4 from the normal Phase 3, a sign that a pandemic was imminent or inevitable. The triggering event for the increase was the sustained transmission of the virus in two countries, the United States and Mexico.

On Wednesday, the WHO raised the alert level to Phase 5.

Ryan said the WHO would send 72 developing countries 2.4 million courses of the antiviral agent Tamiflu from its emergency stockpile.