Students’ temperatures at a Ho Chi Minh City high school are being checked before they enter the school to prevent the A (H1 N1) flu

Another H1N1 infected woman in the central province of Khanh Hoa has developed pneumonia and is in critical condition, provincial health authorities said Thursday.

They are concerned that the disease will spread to the community-level soon and have got the provincial administration to increase the budget to fight the flu by another VND560 million (US$31,460), raising total funds allocated thus far to VND2.9 billion ($162,920).

Meanwhile, a second primary school student in Hanoi and a kindergartner in Dong Nai Province were tested positive for the flu Thursday as education authorities nationwide stepped up prevention measures for the coming school year.

The Hanoi second-grader caught fever on Tuesday after coming home from summer class at the Nam Thanh Cong Primary School in Dong Da District. The child’s blood sample was sent to the National Institute of Tropical and Infectious Diseases.

Families of other students in the school have been informed of the case.

The capital city’s Department of Education and Training also ordered the school to close all classes and sterilize the whole area until it reopens, which it cannot do earlier than August 17.

Lomonosov Private High School, the first one infected in Hanoi last Friday, on Thursday found a female employee infected with the flu. She’d not had physical contact with the infected student Ngo Dai Duong but with many of his classmates, of whom seven have tested positive for H1N1.

The Hanoi Education and Training Department on Thursday sent an urgent order asking schools and education institutes in the area to stop all activities that require gathering students until specifically cleared to do so by the department.

The Preventive Health Center of Dong Nai Province that neighbors Ho Chi Minh City Thursday said they found a three-year-old at the Huong Duong Nursery School infected with the flu.

Another child and four teachers of the school have also developed high fever and their blood samples have been taken for testing.

Also on Thursday, four more workers at the Bien Hoa 2 Industrial Zone in the province tested positive for the virus, raising the zone’s tally to eight and the province’s to 64.

Steering committees in all schools

All schools have set up steering committees to deal with the flu following instructions to the effect issued last month by the ministries of Health and Education and Training.

Students at the Nguyen Gia Thieu Secondary School in HCMC have been asked to wear medical masks in class which began meeting Monday. All the classrooms will be sterilized before the school year officially starts on August 15.

The SaigonTech School has positioned a team of medical workers at the gate to check temperatures of everyone entering its premises.

Many kindergartens in the city have deployed similar measures to ensure only healthy children attend the summer classes.

Vu Thi Hong Hanh, vice principal of Thuy Tien Kindergarten in Tan Phu District, said any children found with high temperature would be quarantined immediately before they contact their parents and health officials.

Hanh said the entire school is being sterilized every day after the children return home.

At the private International Primary School in HCMC, the staff and nearly 12,000 students have been trained on preventive measures against the virus.

The school has also set up quarantine rooms for suspected cases and installed equipment to regularly check the condition of staff and students. All its students are being surveyed to ensure they’ve not come into contact with H1N1 patients before the new school year opened early this month.

Cao Thi Xuan Nhan, the school’s medical worker, said they had signed a contract with the local preventive health agency to sterilize the school every day.

As of Wednesday, the number of infections at the RMIT University in HCMC, an affiliate of the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University in Australia, had reached 35, with 32 more cases since the schools announced it was shutting down on July 23.

The school is providing hand sanitizers and medical masks for free.

Volunteer students in the city have begun to distribute leaflets to students’ parents at schools and to foreign tourists in the city’s downtown areas, aiming to update the community with the latest information on the global pandemic.

Meanwhile high school teachers and officers in the central region’s Quang Nam Province on Wednesday attended the second day of a training course that will last until Sunday to equip them with measures to contain swine flu for the coming school year.

The Department of Education and Training of An Giang Province in the Mekong Delta has ordered schools and educational institutes to prepare at least one quarantine room each as well as equipment to examine and monitor suspected patients.

The Mekong Delta province of An Giang will train around 1,200 officials at educational institutes this month on measures to be taken against the flu.

Health authorities in neighboring Kien Giang Province Thursday announced seven swine flu patients in the same family, who’d visited HCMC earlier to receive their relatives from overseas.

More masks made

Medical companies Danameco and Bao Thach told Thanh Nien Thursday they were working at full capacity to meet rising demand for medical masks.

Pham Thi Minh Trang, general director of Danameco, said the company is producing 100,000 medical masks a day, ten times its output in June and earlier months.

The company is going to install four more assembly lines between August 15-20 to raise the amount to 300,000 masks per day, the number Bao Thach Company has been making every month since the first case was detected in the country.

The Health Ministry on Thursday confirmed 39 more cases of influenza A (H1N1), raising the country’s tally to 1,043 including one fatality and 608 who have recovered fully.

The ministry called on all citizens to try and protect themselves but not to use Tamiflu without doctors’ instructions.

The World Health Organization Thursday moved to reassure the public about the safety of pandemic flu vaccines, emphasizing that rigorous precautions were taken despite the speed of their development, AFP reported.

Reported by Thanh Nien staff