(ChinaPost.com.tw) – Swine flu may have started spreading in Singapore after the city-state confirmed 23 new cases, of which eight had not traveled to affected areas or had known contact with other confirmed cases.

The infections bring Singapore’s total to 126, the Ministry of Health said in a statement late yesterday. The government will continue trying to contain the virus “for as long as it is practical to do so,” it said. “Singaporeans can protect themselves and others by practicing good personal hygiene and being socially responsible,” the ministry said in the statement.

Among the city-state’s new infections was a member of a Philippines youth football team, which is contesting the Asian Youth Games in Singapore, the ministry said.

The other 17 members of the team, and two coaches, have been quarantined, the Straits Times newspaper reported.

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(ChinaPost.com.tw) – Five new cases of A(H1N1) influenza cases tested yesterday raised the total number of swine flu infections in Taiwan to 49, and half of them were infected during travel to Thailand, according to the Central Epidemics Command Center (CECC).

Three of the newly identified patients were found to have been infected while traveling in Thailand, while the other two caught the virus in the United States, said Shih Wen-yi, spokesman for the CECC and a senior official at the Center for Disease Control (CDC).

Shih said 48 of Taiwan’s 49 A(H1N1) virus infections have been imported, with 25 or half coming from Thailand and 17 from the United States.

The center advised that people refrain from traveling to areas affected by A(H1N1) flu.

To those who insist on traveling to those destinations, CECC experts suggested that they read local reports on the swine flu outbreak and closely follow the related instructions of local health authorities.

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(ChinaPost.com.tw) – Schools in western Japan were re-opening their doors on Monday as the number of new H1N1 flu infections leveled off but China, Australia and South Korea announced a rise in their numbers of confirmed cases.

The H1N1 swine flu has infected more than 12,000 people in 43 countries and killed 86 according to the World Health Organization, which is poised to declare a full pandemic of the virus.

WHO chief Dr. Margaret Chan said on Friday the world had to be ready for H1N1 flu to become more severe and kill more people.

Japan’s Health Ministry had confirmed 343 cases of the new flu as of late on Sunday. About 4,500 schools closed last week as the virus spread, mostly among teenagers in the western prefectures of Osaka and Hyogo.

Japan is the worst-affected country in Asia in terms of the spread of the new H1N1 swine flu virus.

But the government had relaxed some of its regulations on dealing with the new strain of flu last week, concerned that they would harm the already ailing economy.

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(ChinaPost.com.tw) – Two more cases of swine flu, officially known as influenza type A(H1N1), were confirmed in Taiwan yesterday. But health officials maintained the epidemic alert at Level Two with a focus on forestalling the virus spread into Taiwan from abroad.

Shih Wen-yi, spokesman for the Central Epidemics Command Center (CECC) at the Executive Yuan (Cabinet), reported at 7 p.m. that a 22-year-old Taiwanese female student studying in New York was discovered to have a fever of 38.6 degrees Celsius upon arrival at Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport a day earlier.

The young woman was taken by ambulance directly from the airport to the nearby Taoyuan General Hospital and placed in quarantine.

“She has been given anti-flu medicine and her condition is under control,” Shih said.

Shih, who is concurrently deputy director-general of the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) under the Department of Health (DOH), had to hold another press conference in late evening to announce that another co-ed returning from the U.S. West Coast had also tested positive for swine flu.

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