New Delhi - Seven students from a school in northern India tested positive for swine flu, after recently returning from a trip to the United States, officials said Tuesday. With 30 people testing positive for the virus in India, and all but two of them becoming infected abroad, the government has advised students against foreign travel.
"While this disease is not controlled globally, I would like to request young people from educational institutions going abroad to suspend their visits for the time being. They can go after two to three months," federal Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad was quoted as saying by IANS news agency after a meeting with health officials Monday.
All seven students of Guru Amar Das Public School in Jalandhar, north-western Punjab state, were stable and responding to treatment, a statement from the hospital where they were admitted said.
The students were part of a group of 31 teenagers who had gone to New York and Florida to visit National Aeronautics and Space Administration facilities.
All were being monitored along with their family members. Additional supplies of drugs for the disease have been provided to the Jalandhar district health authorities, a federal Health Ministry statement said.
Of the 30 people who have tested positive countrywide, 11 have been treated and discharged, the statement added.
