Hong Kong calls for the U.S. to screen passengers at airports for flu

I too agree that swine flu is not that serious as a public health problem (probably only a flu with 10x the death rate of the normal flu). However, if we don't do more to control it and it becomes a pandemic here, other countries will ban us from entering. Then our economy will take another big hit.

http://www.forbes.com/2009/05/13/swine-flu-asia-update-hk.html

Swine Flu Update
U.S. Exporting Swine Flu To Asia
Vivian Wai-yin Kwok, 05.13.09, 11:28 PM EDT
Hong Kong calls for the U.S. to screen passengers at airports.

HONG KONG -- The Hong Kong government called on the United States to implement exit screening measures at airports to avoid exporting swine flu via airline passengers after a Hong Kong resident who returned from San Francisco was confirmed as the city's second swine flu case.

A 24-year-old man with fever and flu symptoms passed through all U.S. immigration checkpoints on Sunday as he flew from Las Vegas to San Francisco, then boarded Cathay Pacific flight CX 879 on Monday to return Hong Kong. Before his trip, on May 6, the patient developed a fever, and two days later he had a cough and a sore throat.

After he returned to Hong Kong, he consulted a clinic at the airport and was immediately sent to a hospital. He is stable and has not developed severe symptoms or complications, according to Centre for Health Protection Controller Dr. Thomas Tsang in Hong Kong.

The Hong Kong government had traced the 51 passengers who sat in front and the three directly behind the patient's seat in the 62nd row on the plane. Forty-five of them have left Hong Kong and the remaining six are now under quarantine in Hong Kong.

Dr. Tsang called on overseas students planning to return to Hong Kong for the summer to avoid travel and seek medical treatment when they have flu symptoms.

Secretary for Food and Health Dr. York Chow, the highest health official in Hong Kong, has also written to U.S. health authorities informing them of this confirmed case and called for stringent screening of airline passengers leaving the United States.

According to the World Health Organization, 33 countries have officially reported 5,728 cases of influenza A(H1N1) infection as of May 13. Mexico topped the list with 2,059 laboratory-confirmed cases, including 56 deaths. The United States ranked second with 3,009 confirmed cases, including three deaths. Canada has reported 358 cases that resulted in one death.

The risk of an outbreak of swine flu in Asia will peak in the summer, when overseas students return home from the U.S. and Canada, where thousands of swine flu cases have been reported.

China's Ministry of Health also confirmed Wednesday that a 19-year-old student who returned from Canada last Friday has tested positive for the deadly virus.

The patient, who studied at a Canadian university, boarded Air Canada flight AC 029 from Toronto on May 7 and stopped in Vancouver before arriving in Beijing on May 8. Three days later, he developed a fever, sore throat and headache but continued his travels by train to Jinan, the provincial capital of Shandong. The student called the Jinan Center for Disease Control and Prevention while on the train. He was later sent to the Jinan Infectious Disease Hospital for isolation and treatment, state-media Xinhua reported Wednesday afternoon.

The latest case came just two days after another 30-year-old student surnamed Bao, who recently returned from the United States, tested positive for the A/H1N1 influenza early on Monday. Bao is the first confirmed case of swine flu on Mainland China. After his case was confirmed, Chinese President Hu Jintao ordered officials at all levels to take all emergency measures to prevent the disease from spreading (See "China Alarmed About Spread Of Swine Flu").

Elsewhere in Asia, Thailand's health minister announced Tuesday that two people who had recently returned from Mexico were confirmed to have contracted swine flu. The first two cases of swine flu in Thailand marked the official arrival of the virus in Southeast Asia.

 

3rd death in TX now.

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/6425790.html

Texas officials report swine flu death
© 2009 The Associated Press
May 15, 2009, 12:04PM

CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas — Nueces County officials say a Corpus Christi man has died from the swine flu.

The unidentified 33-year-old man died May 5 or May 6 after getting sick earlier in the month, said Dr. William Burgin Jr., the medical authority for the Corpus Christi-Nueces County Health District. He says the man had multiple medical conditions, including heart problems, that made it more difficult for him to survive any viral illness.

Burgin says the man, a single parent, had three children and that only one of the kids got sick. The child was treated with Tamiflu and is now doing better.

Burgin says Nueces County health officials got confirmation Friday morning the man had died from swine flu

 

NYT says we have over 100,000 cases

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/16/health/16influenza.html?hp

Mild U.S. Flu Cases May Exceed Official Tally

By DONALD G. MCNEIL Jr.
Published: May 15, 2009
The real number of swine flu cases in the United Statescould be “upwards of 100,000,” a top public health official estimatedon Friday — far higher than the official count of 7,415 cases confirmedby laboratories.
The official, Dr. Daniel Jernigan, head of flu epidemiology for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention,said at a news conference that the official number gave an inaccuratepicture of the outbreak because so few mildly sick people were beingtested.
He added that flu was more prevalent than usual,“something we would not normally expect at this time of year.” But heemphasized that most cases were mild. There have been 173hospitalizations and 5 deaths reported to the agency.
The latestdeath, added Friday, was that of a 33-year-old man in Corpus Christi,Tex. The Associated Press reported that he died May 6 of viral pneumonia and had several health problems, including morbid obesity, an enlarged heart and an underactive thyroid.
At the same news conference, another C.D.C. official announced that the agency planned to lower its alert on travel to Mexico soon. Mexico’s outbreak has not proved as dangerous as it originally seemed.
Theagency will no longer suggest that Americans avoid nonessential travel,said Dr. Martin S. Cetron, its director of global migration andquarantine. Instead, it will suggest that anyone with underlyingconditions that might make the flu more severe consult a doctor before traveling. Those conditions, previous reports suggest, include pregnancy, asthma, diabetes or cardiovascular disease.
The shifting case figures show how different a new flu can be from atypical seasonal one. Seasonal flu is estimated to kill 36,000Americans a year, usually as the last blow for the aged and infirm, andoutbreaks in nursing homesare the norm. This year’s swine flu is concentrated in those ages 5 to24, Dr. Jernigan said, and school outbreaks like those under way in NewYork and Houston are the norm.
New pandemic flu often mutatesto become the milder seasonal flu; the seasonal H1N1 is a distantdescendant of the 1918 Spanish flu, and the seasonal H3N2 is related tothe H3N2 of the Hong Kong flu pandemic of 1968.
The agency hasa network of 4,500 emergency rooms, clinics and doctors who reportweekly how many patients with flu symptoms they see. Normally, Dr.Jernigan said, their counts would now be dropping toward zero as theflu season ends; instead, some are reporting numbers they see at theseason’s peak.
Flu prevalence varies around the country, hesaid, but has been heaviest in the Pacific Northwest and in theSouthwest, along the Mexican border.
Also on Friday,GlaxoSmithKline became the first company to announce plans to make avaccine against the new strain of swine flu.
The World Health Organizationhas not yet made a recommendation on whether to go ahead with a newvaccine, but the company said it already had orders for 128 milliondoses from Britain, France, Belgium and Finland, roughly enough for thepopulations of all four countries if a single dose turns out to beprotective. It will also donate 50 million doses to the World HealthOrganization for poor countries, the company said.
Glaxo andits customers are essentially betting that the virus will not mutate sofar that the vaccine will not protect against the strain circulatingwhen it is ready. That should be in four to six months after it getsviral “seed stock” from the C.D.C.
Glaxo will add an adjuvant, achemical compound that jolts the immune system into a stronger reactionthan the seed stock virus alone does. Glaxo said it would not have tointerrupt its run of seasonal flu vaccine, which is scheduled to finish in July.

 

It is not perfect but at least it will be of some help.

If I were Obama, I would quarantine all confirmed cases.

 

No need to draw blood. You only need a body temperature monitor.