Nine more flu A/H1N1 cases crop up in Asia-Pacific region on Saturday

Nine more flu A/H1N1 cases crop up in Asia-Pacific region on Saturday

www.chinaview.cn 2009-05-24 00:31:32

Print

SEOUL, May 23 (Xinhua) -- The Asia-Pacific region is still in the shadow of flu A/H1N1 as nine more infection cases were confirmed in South Korea, China's Hong Kong and Australia on Saturday. Early on Saturday, the South Korean health authority confirmed an American resident had been infected with the new type-A influenza virus. It is the fifth case of the virus confirmed in the nation. The 23-year-old female English teacher has been quarantined and is going through a close examination at a local hospital. "We are currently trying to find out how she was infected with the virus and tracking down the people she contacted during her stay in the country for other possible infections," an official at the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDC) said. Later, the authority confirmed another woman, 26, who lived in the same building as the fifth patient, had been infected with the virus. This confirmation was followed by four more others who also lived in the same building, which brought the total number of confirmed cases in South Korea to 10 on Saturday. The Health authority said they are working on tracking down about 70 individuals who came into contact with the American woman since she arrived in the country on May 16. The previous confirmed patients in the country include three Koreans and one Vietnamese traveler, all of whom were released from quarantine after being treated with antiviral drugs. The health authority in Hong Kong also confirmed two infection cases, a man and a woman, on Saturday. Both patients arrived in Hong Kong late Friday from the United States and they were sent to hospital from the airport after thermal scanning detected them running a fever, said Thomas Tsang, controller of the Center for Health Protection. According to Tsang, the female patient, a 20-year-old student in New York, was wearing a facial mask throughout her journey to Hong Kong. The other patient, a 53-year-old man from China's mainland, put on a mask after developing a sore throat while still on flight UA 839 from San Francisco. Tsang said as the summer vacation is near more students are expected to return to Hong Kong and more imported cases of infection may emerge as a result. In Australia, a 15-year-old boy from Melbourne's northern suburbs was diagnosed with the flu A/H1N1 virus on Saturday, being the country's fourteenth confirmed case. Victorian Health Minister Daniel Andrews declined to reveal where the boy was from or which school he attended until all parents were notified, but said the boy had not traveled overseas recently. "He ... has no travel history or any link to anyone else who has a travel history," ABC news quoted Andrews as saying in Melbourne. "So this is a community acquired case," he said. Victoria's Department of Human Services were trying to track down anyone who was in contact with the boy for more than four hours. The flu alert level has been lifted from 'delay' to 'contain,' giving authorities in all states the option to close schools if students are at risk. Meantime, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd said on Saturday his government's decision to move to a containment stage to deal with the flu spread will be disruptive but necessary. Rudd said he understood that would cause inconvenience to families, however, "we also have the responsibility for the public health of the nation and therefore we will take whatever actions are necessary to underpin the public health of the nation." However, the chief medical officer Jim Bishop said the cases of flu A/H1N1 have been "fairly mild" in Australia compared with cases in countries such as the United States and Mexico. "It is a spectrum of disease which we've mainly seen the mild end," he told reporters in Canberra. Unlike the severity of cases seen overseas, the Australian cases have tended to last three to four days "and people aren't particularly ill with it," he said. Bishop also said because Australian authorities had successfully delayed the virus spreading in the country, they have been able to learn a lot about it since the first cases were reported in Mexico.