New Delhi, July 22: Fifteen more fresh cases, including six from here, of A(H1N1) flu were reported on Tuesday taking the total number of those affected with the virus to 323 in the country and a school in Pune was closed for a week due to a rise in the number of students with the disease.
With six fresh cases in the national capital, the total number of those affected with A(H1N1) flue crossed the 100-mark here. There are 105 reported cases in the city so far, out of whom 12 remained in the hospital.
Besides the cases in Delhi, two cases each were reported from Chennai, Vishakhapatnum and Pune and one each from Gurgaon, Dehradun and Thiruvanathapuram.
Among the six cases in Delhi are a 15-year-old girl student, who was in contact of a previously reported positive case, and a 15-year-old boy, Health Ministry officials said.
In Pune, a reputed English medium school was closed on Tuesday for a week following an alarming rise in the number of its students testing positive for A(H1N1) flu, which has touched 13. Ten students of the school are already in an isolation ward of a hospital.
Delhi Health Department officials said that out of the 12 patients still in hospital in the city, six are students.
Eight students, who had contacted the disease, have been discharged after medication.
Out of the six students, officials said, two cases were that of two girls of St Thomas School in Mandir Marg who tested positive last night for the virus.
The Health Department has already issued advisories to private schools informing them about precautions to be taken to prevent the spread of the disease among other students.
Teams from Health Department visited the affected schools.
In Delhi, St Thomas School had asked a section of class VII to go on precautionary leave after one of its students tested positive for A(H1N1) flu while Sardar Patel Vidyalaya in Lodhi Estate had asked some students and teachers to go on leave following reports of a student being affected by the disease.
The Springdales School on Pusa Road had also asked students of standards VI and IX to remain at home till July 22.
Minister of State for Agriculture K V Thomas informed the Lok Sabha that the government was keeping a vigil to tackle any outbreak of A(H1N1) flu in animals in the country.
“The government is maintaining necessary vigil to tackle any situation of occurrence of A(H1N1) flu in animals in the country,” he said.
A contingency plan has been chalked up to fight the threat and save livestock and poultry. Already, an advisory with a fact-sheet on A(H1N1) flu has been circulated to all states in April, he said.
State governments have undertaken intensive physical surveillance of A(H1N1) population in the country. If any unusual mortality in pigs is seen, the samples will be sent to High Security Animal Disease Laboratory in Bhopal, he added.
Meanwhile, a Thai girl studying in a residential school in Dehradun has been tested positive for A(H1N1) flu.
The 8-year-old girl is currently admitted to an isolated ward of her school’s hospital where quarantine facilities are available.
She recently came back from her home in Thailand and had reported symptoms of A(H1N1) flu, Dr Pankaj Jain, the nodal officer of A(H1N1) flu in Uttarakhand, told PTI.
He said the New Delhi-based National Institute of Communicable Diseases this evening confirmed that the swab and other samples of the girl were reported positive.
–PTI