Hong Kong - Hong Kong has confirmed its second case of swine flu in a 24-year-old local man who flew to the city from the United States, officials said Wednesday. The man was put into an isolation ward in the city's Princess Margaret Hospital and was confirmed as having the H1N1 virus after his admission, a Department of Health spokesman said.
Details of how the man flew to Hong Kong and what measures would be taken with regard to his fellow plane passengers were due to be announced at a briefing Wednesday afternoon.
Around 300 hotel guests and staff were quarantined for a week beginning May 1 when Hong Kong's first swine-flu patient was found to have stayed at the Metropark Hotel in the city's Wan Chai district.
Officials said they would not take such extreme quarantine measures in future now that more was known about the way swine flu was transmitted.
Hong Kong has had a strict anti-virus regime in place since 299 people died and about 1,800 were infected in the 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS.
As for swine flu, 5,251 cases have been reported in 30 countries, according to World Health Organization statistics from Tuesday. Sixty-one people have died, 56 in Mexico and the rest in the United States, Canada and Costa Rica.
