Ho Chi Minh City residents are worried that being suspected of having the H1N1 virus will necessarily mean they will catch the flu as suspects are quarantined together.

If suspected, they are sent to the Pham Ngoc Thach Hospital in Distric 5 where four to five of them will stay in a room.

Within two hours on Monday morning, four people were transported from the hospital to HCMC Tropical Diseases Hospital in the same district after they tested positive for the flu, also known as swine flu.

“My sister is quarantined here. I don’t know if she was staying in the same room with those four,” said a woman from Go Vap District waiting outside the Pham Ngoc Thach Hospital.

A resident from the Central Highlands town of Da Lat was also worried because his relative was also confined at the same hospital.

Earlier, an overseas Vietnamese from Australia called Thanh Nien from the hospital, saying “I’m so worried. My room has six suspects and the sick can infect the healthy.”

Director Nguyen Huy Dung said Pham Ngoc Thach Hospital cannot afford a room for each patient.

Nguyen Van Chau, director of HCMC Health Department, added that a hospital is not like a restaurant, especially when a large number of people are admitted.

The hospital has followed the department’s order to reserve an area of 50 sickbeds with several people sharing a room.

“But we only put people in the same flights together,” Dung said, adding that those will also be tested together.

Chau said all the people quarantined are required to wear face masks all the time.

One doctor at the hospital said many foreigners brought there have expressed anger as doctors and nurses lack the language skills to explain why they are being quarantined.

Eight passengers at Tan Son Nhat International Airport Tuesday were found with high body temperatures and sent to the hospital for testing.

The city’s Health Department on Tuesday reported ten more cases of influenza A, raising the country’s tally to 309. Nine of the new patients came from overseas and one had physical contact with a recovered patient from Thailand.

As of Tuesday evening, 258 patients had recovered fully, including 208 in HCMC.

Most patients so far have recovered after seven days of treatment with Tamiflu, but recently some have responded more slowly, Health Ministry officials said at a Hanoi conference Tuesday.

Doctors at the HCMC Tropical Diseases Hospital are raising the dose for two patients after they failed to recover in ten days.

Meanwhile, similar cases at the National Institute of Infectious and Tropical Diseases have been treated with other medicines instead of higher doses.

As of July 12, swine flu had infected 114,569 people in 135 countries and territories, killing 572, the Vietnam News Agency reported Tuesday, citing the European Center for Disease Prevention and Control.

Vietnam’s neighbor Thailand has reported 18 deaths caused by the flu while the nearby Brunei and the Philippines have recorded one fatality each.

Source: TN, VNA