A Mexican tourist visiting Hong Kong was diagnosed with swine flu yesterday in Asia's first confirmed case of the disease.
Officials ordered a weeklong quarantine of the Metropark Hotel where the 25-year-old man stayed and started tracking down his recent contacts.
The patient, who flew to Hong Kong via Shanghai on China Eastern Airlines flight MU 505, developed a fever after arriving in the territory Thursday afternoon, Hong Kong leader Donald Tsang(曾蔭權) told reporters.
Meanwhile, Mexico started a five-day shutdown of most offices and businesses yesterday to try to halt the spread of a deadly flu strain, and officials said they were encouraged by signs the number of new cases was dropping.
Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova said the public hospitals that treat roughly half the country admitted just 46 patients with severe flu symptoms on Thursday, down from 212 patients on April 20.
Mexico, the worst-hit country, has reported 176 deaths from the new strain. Worldwide, 11 countries have confirmed cases of the new strain of the H1N1 virus, with the Netherlands the latest. A further 17 countries were checking possible cases.
The WHO said on Thursday it would call the new virus strain Influenza A (H1N1), not “swine flu,” to appease outraged meat producers since there was no evidence that pigs had the virus or could transmit it to humans.
New confirmed cases were reported in Canada, the US and Europe. Almost all infections outside Mexico have been mild and only a handful of patients have required hospital treatment.
Only one person has died outside Mexico: a toddler from Mexico who traveled to the US.
Worries about the spread of the virus mounted in the US as its H1N1 caseload passed 100, and nearly 300 schools closed in communities across the country. US officials had to spend much of the day reassuring the public it's still safe to fly and ride public transportation after Vice President Joe Biden said he wouldn't recommend it to his family.
“There's not an increased risk there,” said Richard Besser, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
“If you have the flu or flu-like symptoms, you shouldn't be getting on an airplane ... but for the general population that's quite fine to do,” he said.
The WHO says it does not know enough about the new strain to say how deadly it is, how far it might spread and how long any potential pandemic may last.
The WHO said yesterday that no meeting of its emergency committee was scheduled, meaning there was no immediate likelihood of the current level 5 alert being raised to a full “phase 6” pandemic alert.
To declare a full-blown pandemic, the WHO would have to be convinced the new virus is spreading in a sustained way among communities in another region besides North America.
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