Three people have tested positive for swine flu in Egypt, bringing the number of confirmed cases to eighteen. They arrived separately in Cairo last week from the United States, Canada and Colombia, the Ministry of Health said. Abdel Rahman Shahin, spokesman for the ministry, said the three cases have been hospitalized and taken Tamiflu. Their health conditions are stable. The new cases were a 45-year-old Colombian woman and two children aged seven and eight; one of them a dual US and Egyptian citizen and the other a Canadian-Egyptian. The Colombian woman came from Colombia to Cairo via Frankfurt on the German airline. She arrived at Cairo International Airport on June 10, 2009. The Egyptian-American child came from Minnesota via London aboard the British Airways flight No 155. He arrived at Cairo Airport on June 7 accompanied by his mother, who said that her child had suffered symptoms of influenza and went to a doctor in America on June 5, 2009. The doctor said the child was infected with bird flu A and gave him Relenza drug. The child is the brother of the case number twelve in Egypt.
The Egyptian-Canadian child traveled from Canada to Cairo on June 12 accompanied by his family on board EgyptAir flight No. 996.
In a related development, Cairo Airport's quarantine authorities confined nine passengers coming on six flights from a number of Arab and European countries after it was noted that their temperature was high.
The quarantine authorities suspected two-year-old Hanin Othman Amin and her sister Hur Othman Amin and referred them to Abbasiyah Fever Hospital. They were onboard an EgyptAir flight coming from Kuwait. Abdel Rahman Tareq, 10, was also confined. He was accompanied by his mother Naglaa Ahmed Hussein, who arrived in Cairo onboard an EgyptAir flight from Montreal. Australian passenger Anthony Michael, who traveled from Amsterdam to Cairo, has also been referred to Abbasiyah Fever Hospital.
English passenger Carrie Lewis, from London; Ghada Saeed Zahrani, from Saudi Arabia; and three-year-old Ziad Imam el-Sayeed, from the Czech Republic, have also been referred to Abbasiyah Hospital. 7700 passengers arrived on board 66 international flights from around the world have been checked.
On the other hand, the Egyptian Civil Aviation Authority issued a circular to all workers in the field of civil aviation, calling on them to be cautious and to build awareness among the airport's staff and passengers. The circular also called for taking all precautionary measures and actions needed to address the global epidemic of swine flu.
Pilot Emad Sallam, head of the Civil Aviation Authority, called on all workers to take all preventive measures on all flights to protect crews and passengers. He called on them to restrict these measures on flights to or from the swine flu-infected countries. He also called for complete coordination and cooperation with passengers and representatives of airlines and offices overseas to take emergency measures to sterilize civilian aircrafts, especially which had suspected or confirmed cases or those coming from swine flu-infected countries. Sallam stressed the importance of launching emergency plans and working with the minimum number of workers to overcome the shortage in the vital activities and specialties. He also called for reporting the infected cases as soon as possible and cooperating with quarantine authorities to take the measures necessary to face the epidemic at the Egyptian airports.
