International tourists arriving at the Ho Chi Minh City’s Tan Son Nhat International Airport Saturday.

Ho Chi Minh City’s hotline offering updates on influenza A has been overwhelmed with calls from residents worried about the new H1N1 flu virus which has caused 16 deaths in Mexico.

Dr. Phan Van Nghiem, a city Health Department official, says just Saturday, the hotline buzzed at least 40 times with requests for information about the flu.

He said many of callers had just returned to Vietnam from Mexico, the epicenter of the virus outbreak that could become a pandemic, according to the World Health Organization.

In the meantime, the city has been working posthaste to combat the threat of influenza A.

The International Health Quarantine Center has said monitoring was done round the clock at the Tan Son Nhat International Airport during the Liberation Day and Labor Day holiday.

The city has thus far discovered no case of the viral infection among foreign tourists.

Around 700 visitors arrived Saturday in Tan Son Nhat Airport from areas hit by influenza A, including Hong Kong and the US, the airport authorities said.

Since April 26, when Vietnam began its surveillance against the flu, 1,428 foreign visitors have arrived in HCMC from afflicted areas, all of whom were healthy.

The city health department said Saturday it would continue to keep a close watch, screen temperatures of foreign tourists and quarantine those suspected of contracting the virus.

If any infectious case is suspected, all passengers of that flight will be isolated for further examination and other precautionary measures, the department said.

The municipal administration has also instructed agencies concerned to crank up surveillance at hotels and other accommodations of foreign tourists citywide in addition to reinforcing personnel at border gates.

In the central city of Da Nang, the local branch of the International Health Quarantine Center admitted Saturday it was facing difficulties in updating the docking schedules of international vessels at the city border gates due to unpredictable weather.

But Branch Director Nguyen Van Lanh said authorities at the city’s border gates would keep records of all crew members and passengers once their vessels berthed at Da Nang. Thermal scanners have been installed at all the border gates, he added.

The Central Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology said Saturday it would fortify the collection of blood specimens in community center for examination, not just from patients in hospitals and clinics.

Saturday, Vietnam remained flu-free.

Infections rise in Mexico

The number of confirmed infected H1N1 flu patients in Mexico rose to 427, after lab tests found 46 more positive cases, AFP Saturday quoted Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova as saying.

The number of fatalities remained at 16.

The previous toll in Mexico, given late Friday, was 381 infected plus 16 deaths, for a total of 397 cases.

Health authorities across Asia were scrambling Saturday to limit the spread of the influenza A virus after reporting two confirmed cases in one of the world’s most densely populated regions, an AFP report said Saturday.

The report said further that South Korea confirmed Saturday a 51-yearold woman who recently visited Mexico tested positive for H1N1 flu, while Hong Kong’s first confirmed case was a 25-year-old Mexican who arrived in the city from Mexico via Shanghai.

The Hong Kong hotel where he had briefly stayed, along with 300 guests and staff, was cordoned off by police and put under a seven-day quarantine, while other countries including India and Japan reported suspected cases.

Hong Kong’s confirmed case, the first in Asia, sparked a regional health alert, with China immediately ordering health authorities to find and isolate the man’s fellow passengers.

In Japan, also in the midst of a holiday period, the foreign ministry said a four-month-old American baby was being tested for influenza A, in the country’s latest suspected case.

The baby had tested positive for the H1N1 flu virus after she arrived at Tokyo’s US Yokota Air Base on a military flight from the US with her family Friday, the ministry said.

In India, health authorities isolated two men at a hospital in New Delhi after they arrived on separate flights from the UK and the US.

If confirmed they will be the first cases of the H1N1 flu virus in the country of more than 1.1 billion people.

Source: TN, Agencies