Children wear protective masks at a kindergarten in Hanoi Friday

Anyone having physical contact with influenza A (H1N1) patients must be closely monitored afterward, whether or not they have symptoms, the Ho Chi Minh City health authority told a press briefing Friday.

Nguyen Van Chau, director of the city Health Department, said several people in HCMC had tested positive for the H1N1 virus without showing any signs of sickness.

Chau said the virus would continue to spread, especially at crowded places including boarding schools.

Many healthy people visiting and working at hospitals that treat the flu have also caught the virus, he added.

Thong Nhat Hospital on Wednesday reported that five doctors and nine nurses had been infected. They are suspected to have caught the virus after examining five people last Friday. All five examinees also tested positive for influenza A (H1N1).

The city health department said during the briefing that it would continue to expand communication lines with the public on the matter.

The department said it would train all health officials in the city to treat the flu, also known as swine flu, as quickly as possible.

According to the department, only four health centers in the city are allowed by the Ministry of Health to conduct H1N1 examinations – the Tropical Diseases Hospital, Pasteur Institute, and the Children’s Hospitals No. 1 and No. 2.

The Health Ministry confirmed 35 more H1N1 cases Friday, raising the country’s tally to 1,078. The country’s first death from influenza A (H1N1) was a 29-year-old woman who died Monday in Khanh Hoa coastal province. 628 other patients have recovered fully.

All schools in Hanoi closed Friday in a bid to contain an outbreak of the flu after the first death, AFP quoted the city’s education authority as saying.

Officer Chanh Viet Thong of Hanoi Department of Education and Training told VTC News that the department has ordered schools to stop all activities that require students to congregate.

The schools can continue with other administrative or personnel activities, Thong said, adding that the department had consulted the Hanoi government before making the order.

“The school year will thus begin later than scheduled but students’ health is the most important thing.”

The new school year officially begins on August 17, but schools began opening at the beginning of the week.

In Hanoi, three schools already recorded flu infections among their students, according to the department.

US discourages quick school closure

New US guidelines for the H1N1 flu pandemic released Friday discourage the early closure of schools, unless the virus becomes worse.

“We know now that closing schools is not the best option in most cases,” Dr. Thomas Frieden, director of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told reporters in a telephone interview.

If the virus starts to spread faster when school starts again this month and next, officials should try other means to slow its spread, such as keeping students more widely separated and stressing hand hygiene, the guidelines recommend.

“The potential benefits of preemptively dismissing students from school are often outweighed by negative consequences, including students being left home alone, health workers missing shifts when they must stay home with their children, students missing meals, and interruption of students’ education,” the guidelines read.

Schools for pregnant mothers and disabled children are an exception, as such people are at high risk from flu.

About 55 million students attend 130,000 public and private schools in the US, and seven million staff work there, according to the Department of Education.

Schools are a breeding ground for infections, but studies have shown that unless they are closed for the entire flu season, closing them only delays an inevitable spread.

“The decision to dismiss students should be made locally and should balance the goal of reducing the number of people who become seriously ill or die from influenza with the goal of minimizing social disruption,” the guidelines read.

Sick students should be sent home promptly, they stress. Staff should try innovative ways to keep students apart if flu does show up at a school – for instance, spreading desks apart and keeping classes from mixing.

Source: Thanh Nien, Reuters