Flu-hit Mexico awaits return to business as usual

Post : 5 May 2009 at 08:56 PM

By : AFP
Source : http://www.bangkokpost.com/news/world/142441/flu-
hit-mexico-awaits-return-to-business-as-usual

Mexico eagerly awaited the resumption of normal business at the end of a five-day swine flu nationwide shutdown on Tuesday and launched an operation to airlift home nationals quarantined in China.


As President Felipe Calderon said Mexico's response to the epidemic had saved "thousands of lives," the UN's top world health official said the number of people to have contracted the virus in 21 countries had topped 1,000.


And the third case of infection in Asia was confirmed when a nun tested positive in South Korea despite having not been to Mexico.


Mexico, the epicentre of the outbreak, has been eerily quiet since Friday after Calderon urged everyone to stay at home over a five-day holiday weekend.


However the president, in a televised address on Monday night, said it was coming to the point where the country could start returning to normal.


Mexico "has taken the lead in the global battles against the virus ... thousands of lives have been saved not only in Mexico but in the world" as a result of his government's containment measures, he said. (Mexico takes responsibility in restraint of Swine flu outbreak by shutdown almost every business and government offices in the city.)


Starting on Wednesday, Mexico would progressively return to normal activities by reopening its businesses, schools, museums and other venues closed for a week or more in its clampdown on the A(H1N1) outbreak, Calderon explained.


"At last," said Ana Maria Rodriguez, a teacher from Mexico City. "We live in the capital, we're not used to being cooped up at home."


Calderon warned against complacency as "this virus is still circulating", and urged people to take precautions such as regular hand-washing. (Surveillance should be continually arranged in case of returning of the outbreak.)


And in a sign of the continued wariness, Mexico's football federation said the last nine matches of the championship would be played behind closed doors.


The UN's World Health Organization (WHO) has reported a total of 1,085 cases worldwide and 26 deaths -- 25 of them in Mexico and one in the United States. Mexico puts its death toll at 26.


"In this situation, it's critical that we continue to maintain and strengthen our alert and surveillance," said Keiji Fukuda, the WHO's acting director-general.


The WHO raised its alert level to level five last Wednesday, which indicates a pandemic is imminent, and the organization’s chief Margaret Chan again raised the prospect of it being increased to the maximum of six. (More and stronger reaction to deal with Swine flu outbreak was occurred; Mexico and United Stage ordered to close their school.)


"We don't know how long we have till we move to phase six. Six indicates we are in a pandemic. We are not there yet," she said.


The organization said it had begun sending some 2.4 million courses of anti-viral Tamiflu drugs to 72 countries including Mexico, in an effort to combat the swine flu virus outbreak.


Asia's first person-to-person swine flu infection was confirmed by officials in South Korea, who said a nun had caught the disease from her colleague.


Tests revealed the 44-year-old woman, who had not travelled to Mexico, was infected with influenza A(H1N1), the Korea Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (KCDCP) said.


In China, the centre of the 2003 SARS outbreak has come under diplomatic pressure over its hardline efforts to halt the disease in its tracks, including a ban on imported pork from areas hit by swine flu. (It could lead to be a financial problem for the exported pork countries.)


Although no cases have been recorded on the Chinese mainland, dozens of Mexicans have been quarantined across the country but are now set to fly home as part of a repatriation deal between the two governments.


A chartered AeroMexico airliner landed at Shanghai's Pudong International Airport and was also to pick up other stranded Mexicans from Beijing, Guangzhou and Hong Kong.


In Hong Kong, the scene of Asia's first confirmed swine flu case, chief executive Donald Tsang apologized to guests quarantined in a city hotel for seven days, while defending the decision to isolate them.


Beijing meanwhile has sent a chartered plane to Mexico to fetch 200 of its own citizens stranded by the flu crisis there, China Southern Airlines said.


Mexican travelers held at a Beijing hotel said they were told by their embassy to be ready to leave Tuesday, ending an enforced isolation that Mexico charged was unfairly targeting its citizens.


"We were told to be ready to go. We are just awaiting word," Gustavo Carrillo, a Mexican businessman, told AFP.