Race to stop flu outbreak in Kanto

The number of new swine flu cases was rapidly approaching 300 Thursday night, as government officials attempted to stop a potential outbreak in the Kanto region that could add dramatically to the tally.

The virus continued its spread through the western part of the country, where Kyoto recorded its first infection in a 10-year-old boy.

Research by The Asahi Shimbun found there were 291 confirmed cases of swine flu as of 8:30 p.m. Thursday. The tally was expected to rise overnight.

On Wednesday night, two 16-year-old girls from a senior high school in Kawasaki became the first recorded cases of the virus in the Tokyo area after returning from a trip to New York the day before.

One of the girls lives in Hachioji, in western Tokyo, and the other in Kawasaki. Before Wednesday, all confirmed cases outside of airports had been in western Japan.

The second-year students at Senzoku Gakuen High School were part of a group that traveled to New York for a Model U.N. Conference organized by the United Nations Association of the United States of America.

They returned to Narita Airport on Tuesday on Continental Airlines Flight 9. A check by quarantine inspectors on the plane produced negative results for the influenza A virus, despite the fact both girls had developed fevers during the flight.

They were instructed to wear face masks on the way home from the airport.

Although both developed fevers of 38 degrees or higher, their temperatures dropped after they took anti-viral medicine. They now appear to be recovering.

Neither of the local governments where the girls live has deemed it necessary to ask schools to close.

As a precautionary measure, however, staff at Senzoku Gakuen on Thursday closed the whole campus, from kindergarten to university, until May 28.

The other Senzoku Gakuen students and one teacher who went to New York have not developed flu symptoms but have been advised to remain at home.

Students and teachers from three Tokyo schools, one Kanagawa Prefecture school and one Chiba Prefecture school also participated in the Model U.N. Conference, but all of them returned to Japan on a different flight.

Although none of them has reported health problems, their schools have asked them to stay at home as a precautionary measure.

Health ministry officials are also checking on 17 passengers who sat near the two infected girls on the flight. As of Thursday morning, 14 had not shown any flu symptoms. Contact had yet to be made with the other three.

So far, there have been no deaths in Japan from the disease, which has proved much less virulent than the avian flu for which airport quarantine guidelines were originally drawn up. As a result, health ministry officials have started to compose a more flexible protocol to deal with the situation.

The new measures will split Japan into three regions, and devise steps to contain, diagnose and treat the virus according to the extent of its spread in each region.

One region would include areas such as Osaka and Hyogo prefectures, where the first cases of person-to-person transmission were recorded last week.

The second would include areas such as Tokyo and Kanagawa Prefecture, where only a few cases have emerged.

The last region would comprise areas that have yet to record any instances of infection.(IHT/Asahi: May 22,2009)