Swine flu has now been found in 29 countries, with a total of 4,379 confirmed cases, the World Health Organization said in its latest update today.
While the flu's affects have been relatively mild, deaths are occurring. Mexico has 45 deaths among 1,626 cases; the United States has the most cases, 2,254, with two deaths. Canada has 280 cases and one death and Costa Rica has eight cases and one death. Those are the only countries among th4e 29 where the flu has been found to report deaths from it.
The W.H.O. continues to state that travel restrictions are unnecessary.
Meanwhile, 300 guests and staff of the Metropark Hotel in Hong Kong were released Friday after a seven-day lockdown in the hotel because a Mexican man confirmed as having the swine flu had stayed there.
While some outsiders had derided the quarantine as an overreaction, Hong Kong officials have been extremely cognizant of their experience during the SARS outbreak in 2002 and 2003, which killed 299 in the city and shut down tourism and much international commerce for months.
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By JOE SHARKEY
Bio
- Joesharkey.com
- Joe Sharkey's work appears in major national and international publications. For 19 years until 2015 he was a weekly columnist for the New York Times. He is now a weekly travel and entertainment columnist with the global website Travel.Buzz, as well as an adjunct professor of journalism at the University of Arizona, He has written five books, four non-fiction and a novel, one of which is in development as a movie. Previously, he was an assistant national editor at the Wall Street Journal and a reporter and columnist with the Philadelphia Inquirer. On Sept. 29, 2006, he was one of seven people on a business jet who survived a mid-air collision with a 737 over the Amazon. All 154 on the 737 died. His report on the crash appeared on the front page of the New York Times and later in the Sunday Times of London magazine. He and his wife Nancy (who is a professor of journalism at the University of Arizona) live in Tucson with horses and parrots. He is working on a new novel about an international travel writer who hates to travel. "JoeSharkey.com" is Copyright (c) 2006-2015 by Joe Sharkey.
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