29 April 2009

In the first case of swine flu in the Middle East, an Israeli man who recently returned from Mexico was on Tuesday confirmed to have contracted the potentially deadly virus, officials said. "The virus was confirmed," said Matilda Schwartz, spokeswoman for the Laniado hospital in  Netanya, where the man had been under observation since Sunday morning.

"He is in quarantine, he is feeling well," she said, referring to 26-year-old Tomer Vajim who had returned from a trip to Mexico on Friday.

"It is now official that the swine flu has arrived in Israel," said army radio in announcing the results of the tests performed on Vajim.

It marks the first confirmed case in the Middle East.

Another 49-year-old Israeli who had also recently been to Mexico is currently under quarantine in a hospital in the centre of the country while undergoing tests to determine whether he has contracted the flu.

"It is an epidemic that is affecting the entire world, there is no reason that Israel would escape it," said Ran Balitzer, a doctor who has been put in charge of dealing with the swine flu issue at the Israeli Health Ministry.

He said ministry officials were holding consultations to determine whether to introduce any new prevention measures following the confirmed flu case.

Because pork is banned under Jewish law, Israel's Deputy Health Minister Yakov Litzman of the ultra-religious United Torah Judaism party has said the virus should be called "Mexican flu" in Israel, although his call appeared to go unheeded.

Meanwhile, the United States, Canada and the European Union advised people to avoid non-essential travel to Mexico, and companies adopted wider travel restrictions to countries where cases have been confirmed.

The World Health Organization said a pandemic - a global outbreak of a serious new illness - is not yet inevitable but that all countries should prepare for the worst, especially poorer developing nations.

"They really get hit disproportionally hard," said WHO acting assistant director-general Dr. Keiji Fukuda.

There are 68 cases in the United States and new infections were confirmed on Tuesday in New Zealand. Canada, Spain and Britain also have confirmed cases, and many other countries have suspected infections.

One of the mysteries of the outbreak is why the virus has killed scores of people in Mexico but all of the cases outside the country have been relatively mild. Experts say this may be simply a matter of where they have been looking to find it.

Still, officials have said they do expect to find deaths as the disease spreads.

The last flu pandemic was in 1968, when "Hong Kong" flu killed about 1 million people around the world.

The virus is not caught from eating pig meat products but several countries, led by Russia and China, banned U.S. pork imports. The EU said it has no plans to restrict pig meat products from the United States.

Britain, France, Germany, Canada and the United States issued travel alerts for Mexico. Japan advised its citizens in Mexico to consider returning home soon.

UK travel firms Thomson Holidays and First Choice said they decided to repatriate their customers from Mexico and to cancel flights bound for Cancun on Tuesday. British Airways said it would continue to operate its services.

Private companies stepped up precautions, restricting travel to Mexico and some other countries with confirmed cases and advising staff on how to protect themselves.

China promised to disclose any cases promptly. State-run newspapers urged officials to be open and avoid the kind of cover-up that brought panic during the SARS epidemic in 2003.

Experts say that while it is impossible to stop the spread of the disease, efforts to slow its progress could buy crucial time for countries to procure essential drugs.

While there is no vaccine for the flu and it is spread between humans, it is not yet clear how virulent the swine virus is. The WHO's Fukuda said a mild pandemic is possible but also cautioned that a severe 1918 flu epidemic emerged from mild beginnings.

Worldwide, seasonal flu kills between 250,000 and 500,000 people in an average year. In Mexico, people from company directors to couriers wore face masks while airlines checked passengers for flu symptoms.

"We will defeat this threat," Mexico City Mayor Marcelo Ebrard said as several hundred people suspected to be suffering from the flu were treated in hospitals and life in the normally hectic capital took on an eerie hush.

Mexico has shut all schools across the country until at least May 6 and in the capital, restaurants, bars, cinemas, stadiums have been ordered closed to stop the infection from spreading.

Unsure how worried they should be, people stocked up on food, drinking water, rental movies and surgical masks. - AFP, Reuters, AP

 

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