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 San Francisco, 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.
He flew to Hong Kong on board a Cathay Pacific flight which arrived Monday evening and was taken to hospital immediately after reporting to medics upon his arrival.
Of the 51 passengers who sat within three rows of the man during the flight, 45 had already left Hong Kong while the remaining six had been traced and put into isolation.
A number of other family members and airport officials who came into contact with the man after his arrival in Hong Kong had also been put under quarantine.
A spokeswoman for Cathay Pacific said there had been 273 passengers, four cockpit crew and 16 cabin crew on board the flight which arrived in Hong Kong at 7 pm Monday.
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.
Worldwide, 5,728 cases of swine flu 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.
