4-year-old among 2 new swine flu cases
Updated: 2009-05-28 07:40
By Colleen Lee and Teddy Ng(HK Edition)
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HONG KONG: Two more human swine flu cases have been reported, bringing the total to 12.
One of the patients was a 4-year-old boy who returned from Seoul on Korean Air flight KE 613 with relatives around 3 pm on Sunday, said Thomas Chung Wai-hung, head of the emergency response and information branch of the Centre for Health Protection.
He said the boy had been in Vancouver between May 12 and May 20.
Chung said the boy and his family rode home to Tuen Mun aboard the E33 bus.
In the following two days, the boy, with fever and cough, did not attend school, said Chung.
The foreign domestic helper for the family took the boy to a Chinese medicine practitioner on a minibus Tuesday.
Later that day, the victim's father drove him to Tuen Mun Hospital.The boy's test for the A (H1N1) virus was returned positive yesterday,Chung said.
The second new case was the mother of siblings who were confirmed to have human swine flu on Monday.
The family had returned from the United States on Sunday and the siblings, who felt ill, were admitted to hospital the next day, said Chung.
Their mother, after taking Tamiflu starting Monday, developed fever and cough on Tuesday, Chung said.
She was confirmed to have contracted the virus yesterday.
Both new confirmed cases are now in stable condition, said Chung.
Meanwhile, Secretary for Food and Health York Chow Yat-ngok said the government had no plan to require all public transport passengers to wear face masks.
"The wearing of face masks is to avoid the infected patients from spreading the virus. The masks will be short of supply if all of the 7 million people in Hong Kong are required to wear one and this is a waste," he said.
Centre for Health Protection controller Thomas Tsang warned travelers entering Hong Kong that they may bear legal consequences if they knowingly provide inaccurate information on health declaration forms.
(HK Edition 05/28/2009 page1)