MEXICO CITY, May 14 (Reuters) - The Mexican capital, which has suffered more than anywhere else from the H1N1 flu, will take up to six months before it fully defeats the disease, Mayor Marcelo Ebrard said on Thursday.

Ebrard told Reuters the number of new cases in Mexico City has dropped and no one has died from the virus in about a week as millions of residents get back to a normal life after the teeming capital was shut down for 10 days to limit its spread.

But the city cannot say it is completely free of the disease, also known as swine flu, until the development of a vaccine, he said.

"In that scenario, you're talking about five or six months before you can have the health issue resolved 100 percent," Ebrard said in an interview. "The decisive point will be when a vaccine appears."

Experts reckon it will take months to produce a vaccine against the new virus -- a combination of avian, human and swine flu strains that has infected almost 6,500 people in 33 countries.

Vaccine experts did not reach a conclusion about whether manufacturers should shift production from a jab to combat seasonal flu to one against H1N1 flu in a meeting on Thursday organized by the World Health Organization.

Mexico City has suffered more deaths than the rest of Mexico, where 64 people have been killed by the new virus.

In the temporary shutdown that hurt the economy, authorities closed bars, cinemas, churches, offices and other public places to try to stop the disease from spreading.

Hotel occupancy in Mexico City has fallen to around 10 percent and tourism has been badly hit, Ebrard said.

The Mexican capital would try to learn from other cities hit by outbreaks of diseases such as bird flu and SARS when trying to get back on its feet, he said.

"We've studied the cases of Asia and Canada in 2003 with SARS in Toronto to try to understand what strategy they used and how long it took them," Ebrard said. (Reporting by Anahi Rama and Miguel Angel Gutierrez; Writing by Alistair Bell; Editing by John O'Callaghan)

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