HONG KONG – THE first case of swine flu was confirmed in Asia as health experts said the world appeared better prepared to fight an epidemic now than a few years ago and vowed a vaccine was only months away.
Confirmation by Hong Kong authorities that a traveller who arrived from Mexico, via Shanghai, had tested positive for A(H1N1) flu virus saw an entire hotel quarantined.
And the news sent shivers through the territory that was at the centre of the 2003 Sars crisis, with Beijing responding swiftly by suspending flights from Mexico to Shanghai, China’s state media reported on Saturday.
Denmark and France joined the list of countries reporting their first cases. But in a sign that authorities may be containing the spread of the disease, Mexico, which has been at the epicentre of the outbreak, said the new multi-strain virus appeared not to be as aggressive as had first been feared.
Mexican Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova said the country’s confirmed toll now stood at 15 dead and 328 people infected, as lab tests came through from hundreds of backlogged cases.
Hong Kong Chief Executive Donald Tsang was taking no chances however in this densely-populated, sub-tropical territory, saying he would ‘raise the alert level from serious to emergency.’
And Xinhua news agency reported Beijing was shutting down flights between Mexico and Shanghai.
The World Health Organisation has warned an official pandemic is now imminent, raising its alert level to five out of six, but a senior official at the UN agency said a vaccine was in the pipeline.
‘We have no doubt that making a successful vaccine is possible in a relatively short period of time,’ Marie-Paule Kieny, WHO Director of the Initiative for Vaccine Research said, adding it may take four to six months.
With 143 infections confirmed in the United States across 20 states, US officials also said the outbreak did not appear to be anywhere near as dangerous as the 1918 flu epidemic that swept the globe, killing an estimated 50 million people. — AFP
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