Malaysia confirmed its first case of swine flu yesterday, Health Ministry Director General Ismail Merican said.
“I can confirm [that it] is the first case in Malaysia,” he said.
“The patient is a 21-year-old male student who had just returned from the United States on May 13, 2009 and who was down with fever, sore throat and body aches on May 14,” the health ministry said.
“This is the first A(H1N1) flu case found in Malaysia,” the ministry said.
It said the man went into the Sungai Buloh quarantine facility in Selangor state on the same evening and is now in a stable condition.
It urged all passengers who traveled on the Malaysian airlines flight MH091 from Newark, New Jersey, to Kuala Lumpur that landed at 7.15am on Wednesday to contact the ministry for further instructions.
The ministry said it had so far received 11 flu-like cases for investigation with all the patients warded and isolated for monitoring.
“All these cases showed symptoms of flu and had a history of visiting countries infected with the outbreak [but] all their clinical samples had been sent to institute for medical research for lab tests and tested negative,” it said.
Meanwhile, the WHO said the number of confirmed swine flu cases has reached 7,520, rising more than 1,000 in 24 hours. Sixty-five people have died from the virus.
The European Center for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC), however, said the number of global cases had topped 7,700 worldwide.
The US reported 4,298 cases, including probable cases, the ECDC said.
In Panama the number of cases rose to 39. Colombia had 10, Brazil and Costa Rica each had eight cases, El Salvador had four, while Cuba had three cases, it said.
New Zealand raised the number of reported cases to nine.
In Europe there were 12 new confirmed cases compared to Thursday, raising the number of confirmed cases to 234.
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