Forty-nine Mexican nationals were being held in isolation in different parts of China yesterday even though they showed no symptoms of swine flu, Mexican diplomats in Beijing said.
The group included 10 people at a hotel near Beijing’s airport, about 30 at a Shanghai hotel and six at a hotel in the southern city of Guangzhou, an official at the embassy said.
In Beijing, Mexican Ambassador Jorge Guajardo was able, after a standoff with a Chinese official, to enter the Beijing Guomen Hotel, where the 10 were being kept, but he was not allowed to meet them.
“We are objecting to the fact that they are holding Mexicans in isolation for the fear that they might have the flu virus, even though they have no signs of having the flu virus,” Guajardo told reporters.
Several of the people held in isolation in China had no connection with a flight from Mexico to Shanghai on which a Mexican man who was later confirmed to be infected with the deadly virus had traveled, the ambassador said.
“There are people here who arrived on a plane from Newark on Continental Airlines. There are other people who arrived from Los Angeles that are being quarantined,” he said.
At least 19 people have died from the multi-strain flu in Mexico, and human cases have been confirmed in Asia, Europe and the Americas. The WHO has reported at least 658 cases in 16 countries.
“We have a consular right … to look after our citizens here and that’s the reason I’m at this hotel, to make sure the Mexicans they have here are being treated well. We have reports that that’s not necessarily the case in Beijing,” Guajardo said.
Action by the Chinese authorities to hold Mexicans in hotels and other places because of swine flu fears sparked a diplomatic row with Mexico yesterday.
Meanwhile, Mexico’s flu outbreak appeared to be easing with a fall in serious cases, the government said, but world health officials warned the unpredictable virus could still become a pandemic.
“Each day there are fewer serious cases and the mortality has been decreasing,” Mexican Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova told a news conference in Mexico City, where millions were heeding government advice to stay at home.
Of the more than 100 suspected deaths from the new H1N1 virus that have emerged in Mexico, 19 had been confirmed, Cordova said. Mexico had already scaled back from its original estimate of 176 suspected deaths.
However, new cases of the mongrel virus, which mixes swine, avian and human flu strains, were still being tracked across the world. Costa Rica, Italy and Ireland confirmed cases of the disease, which has now been found in 18 countries.
In Geneva, the WHO said the H1N1 influenza had not spread in a sustained way outside North America, as required before the pandemic alert is raised to its highest level. But it said that would probably happen soon.
“I would still propose that a pandemic is imminent because we are seeing the disease spread,” WHO director of Global Alert and Response Michael Ryan told a briefing on Saturday.
In Canada, health officials said a traveler carried the virus from Mexico to Canada and infected his family and a herd of swine. The Canadian Food Inspection Agency said the herd had been quarantined and the safety of the food supply was not affected.
Few are ready to take chances with the new virus, widely dubbed swine flu.
Mexican authorities said earlier they believed the situation with the new flu outbreak was stabilizing as fewer patients with severe symptoms were checking into hospitals.
The WHO said yesterday its laboratories had confirmed a total of 658 H1N1 flu infections in 16 countries, including 16 deaths in Mexico.
Its toll lagged national reports about the virus but is considered more scientifically sound.
The US, the second-hardest-hit nation, has confirmed 160 cases in 21 states.
But public hospitals in Mexico have noted a steady drop in patients turning up with fevers, suggesting the infection rate may be declining as people use hand gel and avoid crowds.
US officials said they were encouraged by developments in Mexico but it was too early to relax.
Almost all infections outside Mexico have been mild. The only death in another country has been a Mexican toddler who was taken to the US before he became ill.
US President Barack Obama said the US was responding to the new flu strain, closing some schools temporarily and distributing antiviral drug supplies as needed.
Scientists are still trying to assess how the new virus behaves and compares to regular seasonal flu strains, which kill between 250,000 and 500,000 globally every year.
WHO hiked its alert level to 5 from 3 last week — the last step before a pandemic — because of the flu’s spread and the threat it could target poor and disease-prone communities.
In the UK, Health Secretary Alan Johnson said yesterday that the spread of the new flu strain had been contained in the UK, but there would be more confirmed cases.
Health officials had to be ready for a more serious wave of the new H1N1 virus later in the year, he warned.
“There will be more cases, there’s 15 confirmed at the moment. That will go up, there’s absolutely no doubt about that, but at the moment all the evidence is that we can confine, contain it and treat it effectively.”
The Health Protection Agency says there are 15 confirmed cases so far in Britain including two people who contracted the flu without having visited Mexico. Another 631 suspected cases are being investigated.
Also yesterday, local media in Colombia announced the first human case of swine flu in Colombia.
The 42-year-old man infected by the A(H1N1) swine flu lives in the town of Zipaquira, not far from the capital Bogota, the reports said.
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