Australia's health protection officials including chief medical officer Jim Bishop hold meetings on Sunday to talk about how to guard the nation from the pig flu outbreak in Mexico and the United States.

"Australia has good communicable disease surveillance and control systems in place to detect and respond to outbreaks of illness," a spokeswoman for the Department of Health and Ageing said.

A new flu feared to have killed up to 81 people in Mexico has pandemic potential, the World Health Organization (WHO) warned on Sunday, as concerns grow of the virus spreading in the U.S. and worldwide.

"Anyone that has returned from Mexico with influenza-like symptoms since March this year should seek advice from their general practitioner or public health unit," the spokeswomen said.