CAIRO: Egypt's Ministry of Health has confirmed that a 25-year-old Egyptian woman in the Daqahliyah governorate in the northern Delta region has died as a result of the deadly H1N1 Swine flu in the country. She is the second reported fatality from the virus since it was first discovered in Egypt in early June. On July 20, a 28-year-old woman returning from the Umrah – or lesser pilgrimage to Mecca in Saudi Arabia – was reported to have also died after contracting the deadly virus. The 25-year-old woman who died last week, the ministry reported, may have caught the virus from her husband, who also had recently returned from Saudi Arabia. Worries have been sparked in Egypt since the outbreak of the virus, causing the country to cull all its pig population, even though the virus is known not to spread via the animal. The first reported case in Egypt was a 12-year-old Egyptian-American girl who had arrived in the country after traveling from the United States via the Netherlands. Her case began a major crackdown at the airport as a precaution, yet it has done little to stop the spread of the virus, which as infected at least 780 people, the ministry said. Of those, some 716 have fully recovered. Arab health ministries have established a set of preconditions for those wishing to join the Islamic pilgrimage, or Hajj, that follows the holy month of Ramadan in the hopes of stopping the possible widespread pandemic the World Health Organization has said is possible. Also in June, a number of students and faculty at the American University in Cairo residence contracted the virus, which forced health authorities to shut down and quarantine the facility in an upscale Cairo neighborhood for over one week. BM
