Swine Flu reaches China
China Sunday announced the first suspected case of swine flu on the mainland with a man from Sichuan province who had recently returned from the United States. The 30 yr old had just arrived in the Sichuan capital of Chengdu after returning from the United States via Tokyo on Saturday afternoon.
He was found to have a fever in a Sichuan hospital and was diagnosed in preliminary tests to have A(H1N1), as swine flu is officially known. The man, surnamed Bao, had travelled on Northwest Airlines flight NW029 from Tokyo and arrived at Beijing International Airport before flying on to Chengdu on a connecting flight.
The man was transferred to an infectious diseases hospital in Chengdu and people who came into close contact with him during his medical examination had been placed under observation, Xinhua said. The health ministry had sent a team of experts to Chengdu and asked the local health authorities to immediately send a virus specimen taken from Bao to the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention for a second check. The health ministry had ordered local authorities to track for people who had close contact with Bao, and called for passengers on Bao's two flights to contact health authorities as soon as possible.
Asia's first case of swine flu was reported in Hong Kong on May 1, when a Mexican national tested positive for A(H1N1) after flying into the semi-autonomous southern Chinese city from Mexico via Shanghai. The case prompted scores of people being placed in quarantine in China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, including the Mexican's fellow airline passengers and almost 300 guests and staff at the Hong Kong hotel where he had checked in.
China has defended its strict swine flu prevention measures, saying they were necessary to stop the virus spreading through Asia and to avoid "catastrophic consequences" in the world's most populous nation. China has "a big population both in number and in density, and we have experienced SARS," foreign ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu reminded reporters Thursday.
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