The screening equipment installed at HCMC’s Tan Son Nhat International Airport Sunday detected travelers arriving with high temperatures for the first time.

Six passengers who arrived with high fever Sunday at Ho Chi Minh City’s Tan Son Nhat International Airport were quarantined on fears they have influenza A.

The first passenger found arriving with a high temperature since screening began on April 26 was an 11-year-old boy from the city’s Hoc Mon District. He arrived at around 00:30 a.m. after a trip to Hong Kong.

The boy was taken to Children Hospital No. 1, where doctors found he did not have what was until recently called swine flu.

Later in the day, airport screening officials found an overseas Vietnamese man and woman from the US arriving with high temperatures.

They had taken a flight from Seattle in the US and transited in Taiwan.

The city’s Department of Health announced the two were cleared by the Hospital for Tropical Diseases.

Later, at around 4:30 p.m., a Danish man, a German man and a child from Hong Kong arriving from Hong Kong were found to be running high temperatures. They have been tested but the results are yet to be released.

More than 700 of the 7,000 travelers arriving at Tan Son Nhat Sunday came from epidemic zones. More than 2,100 passengers have arrived from these zones since April 26.

Nguyen Huy Nga, head of the Bureau of Preventive Health, said authorities have screened nearly 4,500 such travelers nationwide.

No one has been found yet with influenza A.

But Nga said arriving travelers should inform their health status one, the previous two weeks.

Nguyen Tran Hien, director of the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology, Sunday assured the Minister of Health Nguyen Quoc Trieu that the Institute is capable of detecting the influenza A virus.

He said it had set up a ward in 2006 with support from the World Health Organization and the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention to control and monitor influenza.

The Ministry of Health is scheduled to hold a teleconference today with provincial heath departments on preventing the spread of influenza A.

Travel industry on edge

Vietnamese travel agencies and companies fear that the spreading H1N1 flu virus could cause a dip in international traveler numbers even though the country has not recorded a single case of infection.

Vu The Binh, head of the travel department at the Vietnam Tourism Administration, said so far the flu outbreak has not directly affected the country but noted that a large number of cruise ships passengers coming here are from Mexico, Australia, Europe and North America.

The country’s tourism sector is aiming for 4.5 million international travelers and revenue of US$3.95 billion in 2009, a goal experts consider ambitious considering that last year it only attracted 3.8 million travelers when the global economy was stronger and H1N1 was unknown.

The peak time for international travelers coming to Vietnam is September to April, so domestic travel companies say the picture isn’t positive.

According to VTA statistics, about 1.29 million international tourists came to Vietnam in the first four months of 2009, a 17.8 percent decrease year-on-year. Most of them came from America, China, Korea and Japan.

Reported by Thanh Nien staff