| | |  Americas & Beyond | May 2009 
Canada Reports Flu Death as U.S. Cases Escalate
 Daniel Trotta - Reuters
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The new H1N1 flu killed its first patient in Canada, making it the third country after Mexico and the United States to report a death from the virus that has sickened more than 3,000 people in 27 countries.
Alberta's chief medical officer said on Friday that the woman in her 30s who died on April 28 had not traveled to Mexico, the epicenter of the swine flu outbreak, which suggests a more sustained spread of the infection.
Her death raised the confirmed global death toll to 48 from the virus, a strange coupling between a triple-hybrid virus with pig, human and bird elements and a European swine virus not seen before in North America.
Alberta was also where a herd of pigs became infected with the H1N1 swine flu, apparently infected by a man traveling from Mexico.
U.S. officials expect the new virus to spread to all 50 states.
Japan announced on Saturday its first confirmed cases of the new strain of flu - a teacher in his 40s and two male teenage students who had spent time in Canada.
The global spread of the virus has kept alive concern over a possible pandemic, although scientists say this strain does not appear more deadly than seasonal flu.
The three Japanese had returned to Japan via Detroit on Friday after spending time in Canada, Health Minister Yoichi Masuzoe told a televised news conference.
All three were in hospital and the teacher was being given Tamiflu while the two students' fevers had subsided, he said.
Another 49 passengers who arrived on the same plane will stay in a separate facility for observation for 10 days, while all passengers on the plane were urged to pay close attention to their health for the same period and contact health authorities if they suffered any symptoms.
Italy also reported the first case of the H1N1 flu strain transmitted within the country: a 70-year-old man in Rome caught the virus from his grandson who returned from a holiday in Mexico.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, or CDC, reported 1,639 U.S. cases on Friday, up from 896 on Thursday, a jump that has been expected as a backlog of lab tests were confirmed.
That pushed the global figures to at least 3,413 cases, according to the World Health Organization, or WHO, the CDC and national health authorities.
But U.S. health officials were encouraged that more people were washing their hands as a result of the outbreak.
In Asia, countries whose health diplomacy skills were honed by SARS in 2003 and ongoing outbreaks of H5N1 avian influenza pledged to boost drug stockpiles, share essential supplies and tighten surveillance against what they called an "imminent health threat" to the region.
Health ministers from the 10-member Association of South East Asian Nations or ASEAN, plus China, Japan and South Korea also agreed to set up a "red alert" hotline and rapid response teams to fight the spread of the virus."We cannot afford to let our guard down," ASEAN Secretary General Surin Pitsuwan told the meeting.
In Hong Kong, authorities freed nearly 300 guests and staff of a hotel after quarantining them for a week. |
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