Two Russians prove A/H1N1 flu positive after Cypriot vacation

17.07.2009, 20.23

MOSCOW, July 17 (Itar-Tass) -- Two young women were hospitalized in Ramenskoye near Moscow with A/H1N1 flu after a Cypriot vacation, a source at the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry told Itar-Tass on Friday. “A female resident of Ramenskoye was hospitalized on July 15 with the preliminary A/H1N1 flu diagnosis. She had visited Cyprus together with her father, mother, sister and friend,” the ministry said. “The girl and her friend were both diagnosed as A/H1N1 positive. They are staying at the Ramenskoye infectious disease hospital,” the ministry said. Russian Chief Public Health Official Gennady Onishchenko said on Thursday that a man contracted the new flu virus in Thailand. In all, Russia has seven A/H1N1 flu cases. All of them contracted the virus abroad, including the United States, Cyprus, Thailand and Spain. The first batch of the A/H1N1 flu vaccine Russia is developing will be sent to the Far Eastern Federal District, Onishchenko said at a meeting of the Council of the Presidential Representative to the Far Eastern Federal District in Khabarovsk in early July. He said it was planned to deliver 1.1 million doses of adult vaccine and 400,000 doses of vaccine for children. “We have two major tasks: we must prepare regions for possible outbreaks of the virus and to keep off the virus from the national territory,” he said. The Far East and other Russian regions have drafted flu action plans. The plans are most detailed in the Primorye and Khabarovsk territories and the Amur region. Plans of Yakutia and the Chukotka autonomous district contain serious shortcomings, the officer said. Onishchenko said that the ‘bird’ flu hazard was also serious. China registered 38 ‘bird’ flu cases this year, and 25 of them were lethal. The situation will be most dangerous if the ‘bird’ and ‘swine’ flu viruses combine. That may happen in Southeast Asia. The Far East is an area visited by migrant birds, which enhances the contamination risk, he said.