Swine flu

Mexico starts five-day shutdown to slow swine flu

Article published on the 2009-05-01 Latest update 2009-05-01 15:58 TU

A Mexican presidential security officer wears a mask to guard against H1N1 infection at an event in Mexico City on 1 May 2009
(Photo: Reuters)

With 312 confirmed cases of the H1N1 virus, Mexico has urged residents to stay at home and has shut down business and non-essential government activity to try to stop the so-called "swine flu" spreading. Worldwide, the total of known cases is now about 500 in 11 countries, according to the World Health Organisation, including the first in Asia.

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Mexican schools are closed Friday and some factories have stopped production. The country cancelled traditional public celebrations of international worker's day. Restaurants, bars, tourist sites and other public venues have also been shut down.

All of this will minimise public contact and, Mexican authorities hope, prevent people from contracting the disease from one another.

Officials in the US have announced 118 infections, and a number of other countries have announced new cases. One of them is in Hong Kong -- the first case in Asia. H1N1 has now appeared on all continents except Africa and Antarctica.

However, Professor Tony Barnett of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine has told RFI that he expects H1N1 cases to appear in Africa sooner or later. "Whether they'll actually be detected is another matter," he said, "because I'm not sure that the laboratories in many parts of Africa have the capability to identify whether people's illnesses are caused by swine flu."

Denmark also announced its first case on Friday.

In Germany, health officials confirmed the second case in which H1N1 was transmitted from one person to another on the European continent. A nurse contracted the infection from a patient in a hospital in Bavaria. The nurse has fully recovered.

The other transmission in Europe was from a woman to her boyfriend in Spain. She had recently returned from Mexico.

Twelve people in Mexico are confirmed dead from H1N1, but only one person outside the country, in the United States. Most non-Mexican cases have involved only mild symptoms, and traditional flu treatments have been used successfully against them.