(ChinaPost.com.tw) – Thailand worried about a swine flu outbreak on a naval base Thursday after seven cadets tested positive and 200 more fell ill, while three more American students visiting Cambodia were diagnosed with the disease.

Press reports said Papua New Guinea’s health minister was quarantined with flu symptoms and was awaiting results of tests after visiting Australia.

In Thailand, Navy Commander Admiral Kamthorn Pumhiran said the seven cadets who tested positive for the virus were at Sattahib Naval Base, about 80 miles (130 kilometers) south of Bangkok.

He said the other cadets with symptoms were isolated in separate quarters at the base. They are all in stable condition and being tested for the virus. Thailand reported 69 new cases Thursday, bringing the national total to 1,054.

Cambodian Health Minister Mam Bun Heng told reporters that three students who arrived from the U.S. state of Texas on June 19 had tested positive for the virus. They ranged in age from 16 to 20 and raised Cambodia’s total cases to four.

On Wednesday, authorities announced the country’s first swine flu case in a 16-year-old girl — part of the student group — who developed flu symptoms a day after arriving. She sought medical care Monday.

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The H1N1 (swine flu) virus has reached the sub-Saharan African countries of Cape Verde, Ethiopia and Ivory Coast, according to the WHO, the AP/Boston Herald reports. Last week, South Africa became the first country in the region to confirm a 12-year-old, who had returned from the U.S., tested positive for the H1N1 virus.

“WHO says African countries are particularly vulnerable because of their fragile health care systems and the widespread presence of other health problems such as HIV and tuberculosis,” the AP/Boston Herald writes (AP/Boston Herald, 6/24).

There have been no newly confirmed cases of H1N1 in Ethiopia since two patients tested positive for the virus last week, according to the Ethiopian Minister of Health, Ethiopian Review reports (Tesfaye, Ethiopian Review, 6/24).

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For years those concerned about the consequences of an influenza pandemic from an exceptionally virulent flu virus, like A/H5N1 (“bird flu”) have despaired about motivating business, government and neighbors to take it seriously enough to make serious preparations. It’s understandable. There’s are a lot of potential catastrophes competing for our attention and while each can be made plausible if we can get someone to listen long enough, it’s rare we can do this. As I said, too much competition. Now that a real life influenza pandemic has arrived, the concern of some is that the public isn’t being told how bad this could become, possibly even 1918 level. My view is different. In terms of stimulating genuine pandemic preparedness, I think we are extremely lucky to have a pandemic that so far is nowhere near worst case scenario (and let’s be clear: it isn’t anywhere near worst case). The pandemic is no longer theoretical. It is here and tangible. And it is having some tangible effects in unlikely places, like hedge funds. Hedge funds?

Although talk of the swine flu has largely been out of the media for the past few weeks, a rush of new cases of the H1N1 virus is expected to hit financial centers in the fall and winter ” and organizations, and in particular hedge funds, need to be well prepared for a pandemic.
Bob Guilbert, managing director of marketing and products at Eze Castle Integration (booth 1804), which provides outsourced IT technology and services for hedge funds, says his firm has been taking a proactive approach to the pandemic.

“We’ve drafted our own response plan which we’ve issued to all our employees. The plan takes a look at if they’re ill, how to get checked out; if they travel to countries with the virus, what procedures they should follow. And if the company is in a situation of a pandemic, it maps out procedures for working remotely, etc,” he says.

[snip]

Hedge funds in particular must make sure they have a solid plan in place, he adds, since they must conduct business during trading hours. They need to assess how they are going to stay operational if the virus sidelines their employees.

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A story in yesterday’s New York Times was headlined: In New Theory, Swine Flu Started in Asia, Not Mexico. That sounded pretty interesting. What’s the new evidence? The answer? None. Just speculation. So what’s going on?

Contrary to the popular assumption that the new swine flu pandemic arose on factory farms in Mexico, federal agriculture officials now believe that it most likely emerged in pigs in Asia, but then traveled to North America in a human.
But they emphasized that there was no way to prove their theory and only sketchy data underpinning it.

There is no evidence that this new virus, which combines Eurasian and North American genes, has ever circulated in North American pigs, while there is tantalizing evidence that a closely related “sister virus” has circulated in Asia.

American breeding pigs, possibly carrying North American swine flu, are frequently exported to Asia, where the flu could have combined with Asian strains. But because of disease quarantines that make it hard to import Asian pigs, experts said, it is unlikely that a pig brought the new strain back West.

“The most likely scenario is that it came over in the mammalian species that moves most freely around the world,” said Dr. Amy L. Vincent, a swine flu specialist at the Agriculture Department’s laboratory in Ames, Iowa, referring, of course, to people. (Don McNeil, New York Times)

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By Geoff Kirbyson, Winnipeg Free Press

WINNIPEG — The Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs has declared a state of emergency over the H1N1 flu pandemic, a move it hopes will rattle the cages of the province and the federal government and cause them to spring into action to combat the potentially deadly virus.

AMC Grand Chief Ron Evans said he and his fellow chiefs want to ensure government officials are fully aware of the devastating impact the H1N1 virus is having in their communities throughout the province.

“The governments need to step up. There is no plan in place. Nobody wants to accept responsibility for First Nations. There is very little combatting the H1N1 pandemic. Our people are sick,” Evans said at a press conference at the AMC’s downtown headquarters Wednesday.

The AMC’s desperate call for action came as the province announced the number of confirmed H1N1 cases in Manitoba jumped by 163, bringing the total to 458. As of Monday, 37 patients with the most severe flu-like symptoms have been put on ventilators in intensive care units.

Evans and 11 other chiefs decried the province’s inability to complete even the most simple of tasks on a timely basis — getting hand sanitizers into the communities that needed them — describing it as “a political and bureaucratic nightmare.”

Part of the problem is that commonly used hand sanitizer products can contain upward of 60 per cent alcohol and there was concern among health officials as well as some First Nations chiefs, that the sanitizers could be misused for intoxication.

Anne-Marie Robinson, assistant deputy minister of Health Canada’s First Nations and Inuit health branch, told a Senate committee of discussions between chiefs and public health officials about sending alcohol-based products into communities with addiction problems because there have been “rare” cases where it has been problematic. Robinson would not disclose which reserves had been involved in the discussions and never linked the talks with the “difficulty” she acknowledged was experienced in getting hand sanitizer to some of the chiefs who had asked for it.

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Iraqi health authorities confirmed yesterday that six people recently returned from the US have tested positive for H1N1 epidemic or swine flu, making this the first lab confirmed cases in the country. Iraq’s Health Minister Saleh Al-Hasnawi told a news conference reported by Reuters that: “Today, six cases of this epidemic flu, H1N1, have been diagnosed in our ministry’s central lab.

The six female patients, all members of the Iraqi women’s national basketball team had been competing in Chicago, US, and flew back on 20 June. A seventh member of the team is also infected but this was discovered in neighbouring Jordan, where the team stopped on their return to Iraq, so she is being treated there.

The health minister mentioned another confirmed case of swine flu in a member of the US military-led multinational force but gave no further details other than the case had been confirmed on Wednesday.

Iraq does not yet feature on the latest swine flu global update from the World Health Organization which as of yesterday morning, 24 June, reported 55,867 global confirmed cases of novel H1N1 swine flu including 238 deaths.

The United States continues to dominate the WHO figures, with 21,449 total confirmed cases, including 87 deaths.

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– 8 confirmed cases in Wales, including 3 new cases: – A 19 year old female from Monmouthshire linked to a confirmed case of swine flu in Cambridge. She has been offered antiviral medicine and is recovering. The NPHS has identified three close contacts who are all are well. – A 20 year old male from Torfaen linked to a confirmed case of swine flu in Bristol. He has been offered antiviral medicine and is recovering. The NPHS has identified one close contact that has tested negative for swine flu.

– 160 people have been under investigation in Wales. Of these, swine flu has been confirmed in 8 cases (see above) and ruled out in 134 cases, leaving 18 still under investigation. All of these are displaying, or have displayed, mild symptoms.

– Of the 18 people under investigation, seven were well when first identified, but reported recent flu-like symptoms following travel to affected areas. Blood tests are being undertaken on these individuals to see if they had the flu and to help the NPHS understand the pattern of the disease from the past. Their symptoms may or may not have been due to swine flu. Testing will be conducted in a number of weeks to check whether these people did have swine flu – scientifically it won’t work before that. Investigations have shown that people they had close contact with did not catch flu from them when they were ill.

– No further details will be confirmed or denied about cases in order to protect their right to confidentiality.

– There are now 2,908 laboratory confirmed cases in the UK – 8 cases in Wales, 647 cases in Scotland, 2236 cases in England and 17 in Northern Ireland.

– One person with swine flu in the UK – a case in Scotland – has died. The patient had underlying health conditions.

– Swine flu cases have been confirmed in 99 countries. For the latest international figures for the spread of swine flu, visit the website of the World Health Organization at www.who.int

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The Associated Press

Lewis and Clark County and Butte-Silver Bow each recorded its first case of swine flu Monday.

The Lewis and Clark County patient was not identified by age or gender. Beth Cottingham, a registered nurse with the Lewis and Clark City-County Health Department, says the patient is doing well and is recovering.

Butte-Silver Bow Health Officer Terri Hocking says a 34-year-old Butte woman has been infected with the swine flu virus.

Hocking says the woman sought treatment for a high fever on Friday and later developed other symptoms. Test results confirming the virus came back Monday.

The woman is said to be recovering nicely with no complications.

Hocking says the woman had not been out of town recently, which indicates she may have caught the virus in Butte.

By Andrew Horowitz, Seeking Alpha

While we are hearing horror stories about visitors suspected of having Swine Flu being taken and quarantined within China, we are seeing the reported cases of the Swine Flu on the rise. Surely these are not the total cases, as we are told that only a fraction are actually diagnosed.

The good news is that while we are seeing a spike over the past week in cases, the Death-to-Case ratio is continuing to decline.

We are also hearing a good deal of news pertaining to the precautions that are being taken and the latest technology lending a hand to airport screeners/quarantine officers. These are infrared and heat sensitive cameras that can scan people for heat/fevers as they pass by. The company that is supplying a good deal of these is FLIR Systems (FLIR).

CBS NEWS CLIP on FLIR SYSTEMS CAMERA

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The Associated Press

TRENTON, N.J. – New Jersey state health officials are reporting the state’s fifth swine flu-related death.

The state lab on Tuesday confirmed that a 79-year-old Hudson County woman who died June 19 at Bayonne Medical Center had the H1N1 virus.

Officials say she became ill on June 15 and was hospitalized later that day with a cough and fever. She had underlying medical conditions.

The four others in New Jersey who have died from the virus include a 36-year-old Union County man, a 15-year-old Somerset County boy, a 10-year-old Sussex County boy and a 49-year-old northern New Jersey man.

New Jersey currently has 568 confirmed cases of swine flu in 19 counties and 275 probable cases.