A security personnel officer stands next to a banner calling people to watch out for influenza A (H1N1) symptoms in front of the Health Ministry office in Jakarta Wednesday.

A health ministry official has warned that the influenza A (H1N1) virus in Vietnam has started to become highly contagious, with a rapid increase in the number of cases over the last few days.

Nguyen Huy Nga, head of the Preventive Health and Environment Department under the Health Ministry, said H1N1 infections in Vietnam so far had been confined to people returning from overseas and people who’d had physical contact with them.

“But there’s a very high risk that the flu is going to be highly contagious among the community,” Nga said.

Officials at HCMC’s Tan Son Nhat International Airport Wednesday found 43 passengers with high body temperatures and sent them to Pham Ngoc Thach Hospital for tests.

Various city hospitals on Wednesday received 17 residents who came in to be tested after developing flu symptoms.

As of 5 p.m. Wednesday, the total number of H1N1 cases in the country had reached 166, 128 of them in HCMC, where the first case was detected on May 31.

Of these, 82 people have recovered and been discharged from the hospitals.

Since infections have been detected in people traveling through the Cambodian border in Tay Ninh Province, Nga asked health officials in border provinces to step up surveillance at border gates.

Nguyen Tran Hien, head of the city’s Hygiene and Epidemiology Center, said there’s been no sign of mutation of the virus, adding, “That’s convenient when researching a vaccine.”

Hien added that Tamiflu was still proving to be effective in treating the flu.

Nguyen Van Kinh, head of the National Institute of Tropical and Infectious Diseases, said patients being treated with Tamiflu have tested negative for H1N1 after two to three days.

The virus has infected 774 people in Thailand, killing five; 861 in the Philippines, with one fatality; and 599 in Singapore, according to latest figures from the World Health Organization.

Source: TN, VNA