An influenza A (H1 N1) patient is treated at the National Institute of Infectious and Tropical Diseases.

The Mekong Delta reported its first influenza A (H1N1) case Friday as a teenager in Tien Giang Province tested positive for the virus, adding to Thursday’s national tally of 25 cases.

The patient was admitted to Tien Giang General Hospital on Wednesday with high fever, but escaped later in afternoon and had to be brought back on Thursday after the results.

A relative, identified as Tran Chanh D. of the same age, has also been isolated for treatment at the hospital, pending tests, after showing symptoms of high fever and coughing Friday.

The Tien Giang Health Department has listed 15 people who have had physical contact with the patient since the latter’s arrival at Tan Son Nhat International Airport last week. Two of them had left the province on a trip Friday.

The department has taken blood samples from all the patient’s family members for testing.

Before the case in Tien Giang, the Ministry of Health on Thursday reported 25 patients had been detected with the disease thus far, most of them people coming home from the US.

The number includes one person detected with the virus in Hanoi and others in Ho Chi Minh City.

Officials on Friday found 13 passengers at the Tan Son Nhat International Airport arriving with body temperatures above 38 degrees Celsius, and quarantined them in different hospitals in the city, pending test results.

Eight patients in the city have recovered and been discharged since the first case of the virus was found on May 31, the city Health Department said Friday.

The number of cases in Vietnam is still small, said department director Nguyen Van Chau, stressing that the country will continue observing individual cases instead of switching to community observation.

Response to global alert

Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung on Friday called an urgent meeting with officials from the Health Ministry, saying the country should “try its best and take suitable measures to prevent a flu epidemic [in the country].”

The PM asked the ministry to keep the general public constantly informed of the latest developments regarding the flu and keep abreast of international action taken to contain the disease.

His orders came one day after the World Health Organization (WHO) raised the influenza A (H1N1) threat to six, the highest level, branding it a global pandemic on Thursday.

Tien Giang on Friday announced it will spend another VND5 billion (US$281,000) on measures to contain the disease while Nghe An Province in the north-central region added VND7 billion for the purpose, Vietnam News Agency reported.

Health officials in Thai Binh Province not far from Hanoi have prepared enough medicines for 4,400 patients with the virus, they said.

Residents in Nam Dinh Province, also in the north, have been asked to call two hotline numbers 0350.3631.418 and 0350.3636.668 for instructions related to the disease.

Health minister Nguyen Quoc Trieu expressed concern that some people with the virus but showing no symptoms would refuse to limit physical contact with others and thus threaten to spread the disease.

Nguyen Tran Hien, head of the National Institute of Hygiene and Epidemiology, said the influenza A pandemic was is still at a “moderate” level worldwide, but warned it spreads around 15 percent faster than normal flu.

Vietnam is facing the threat that H1N1 can combine with the H5N1 bird flu virus, or the normal flu to form a mutant that is more infectious, Hien said.

He said the virus strain is completely new and hard for communities to gain immunity against.

Vaccine in the making

The influenza A virus has so far infected almost 30,000 people in 74 countries and territories and claimed 145 lives since it was first detected in Mexico in April, according to WHO figures.

Mexico has been worst hit with its death toll rising up to 109 of 6,294 infections recorded this far proving fatal. The US comes next with 27 deaths out of 13,217 cases reported.

As governments stepped up precautions after the pandemic announcement, Swiss pharmaceutical giant Novartis said Friday it has completed the first batch of vaccine for pre-clinical trials, AFP reported.

The batch has been completed successfully “weeks ahead of expectations,” the company said in a statement.

Novartis said it hopes to start trials on patients in July and gain a license soon after, adding that more than 30 governments had asked for the “vaccine ingredients,” according to the report.

British GlaxoSmithKline also said Friday it could produce a vaccine in four to six months and that it was ready to convert a donation of 50 million doses of vaccine against H5N1 bird flu for the WHO to swine flu doses.

Director General Margaret Chan of the UN agency said the flu pandemic declaration, the first one in four decades, should not spark panic and does not mean the H1N1 death toll would rise sharply.

The alert “means that the world is moving into the early days of its first influenza pandemic in the 21st century,” AFP cited Chan as saying.

The southern hemisphere is currently heading into winter and the height of its flu season. Northern hemisphere countries could expect to see a swine flu surge when their winter starts later, it said.

Australia, the worst hit in the Asia-Pacific region, was considering adopting powers to cancel sports events, restrict travel and even shut national borders, although officials stressed extreme measures are unlikely.

In Hong Kong, which was hit hard by the 2003 SARS outbreak, authorities closed all primary schools after a group of children caught the virus.

Israel’s health ministry has ordered the stocking of vaccines to inoculate up to 25 percent of the country’s 7.2 million population while Canada is investigating possible swine flu outbreaks among aboriginal communities.

Britain is Europe’s worst hit country with 909 recorded cases, but the total has risen significantly in recent days.

In Spain, where there are 488 confirmed cases, Health Minister Trinidad Jimenez has called for calm after WHO raised its alert, saying that the symptoms were “slight” and the flu could be easily treated.

France and Germany, where there are 80 and 95 cases respectively, also said they are not changing their alert levels.

Source: TN, Agencies