Yesterday an Alexandria fever hospital held a 30-year-old Indian sailor called Kamal Besht, on suspicion of swine flu infection. An official source at the hospital said the sailor was put under tight security after his temperature rose significantly whilst also showing symptoms similar to those caused by the H1N1 virus. The hospital department took blood samples to analyze them to make sure if he was actually infected or not. The source added that the patient had been hospitalized and isolated by the quarantine authorities, and that the hospital and the health department raised their alert levels to the top after being informed of the case.
As for bird flu, official statistics issued by the Supreme National Committee to Combat Bird Flu, show that 27 out of the 76 confirmed cases of bird flu (35.5%) have died and that suspected cases from February 17, 2006 to May 26, 2009 amounted to 8,070.
13 new suspected cases were hospitalized yesterday at fever hospitals in Suez, Port Said, Beni Suef and Dakahlia as they showed the symptoms of the disease. For his part, Major General Abd El-Salam Mahgoub, Minister of Local Development, said the Supreme Committee to Combat Bird Flu has decided to shut down farms where bird flu has been detected, to execute all their poultry and to grant no more licenses until it was confirmed that bird flu has totally disappeared. At a press conference held at the headquarters of the Ministry on Thursday, El-Mahgoub said campaigns would be stepped up in the near future due to the decline of the disease during the summer. He also affirmed that the Committee would hold another meeting next week to assess the measures put in place and the anti-disease strategy carried out so far. Ambassador Ismail Khairat, President of Egypt State Information Service and official spokesman of the Committee, set the total number of bird flu cases at 76; 27 males and 49 females.
He pointed out that the government was continuing to apply the Law No. 70 of 2009 banning the circulation of birds among Egypt's governorates. He added that security officials were fully responsible for eliminating the circulation of live birds by confiscating the cars used to carry such birds and referring them to the Public Prosecution.
Dr. Nasr El-Sayed, First Ministry Undersecretary for Health and Preventive Medicine, said during the conference that the vaccine policy used to combat the disease would be changed. He stressed that further vaccine doses would be given to the governorates and the provinces where the disease has shown up
