TOKYO: Japan said on Monday it would triple the number of quarantine officers at Tokyo's Narita airport to try to prevent a H1N1 flu outbreak, as millions of holiday travellers crowded onto planes and trains.

The health and welfare ministry will dispatch as many as 260 officers to the nation's largest international airport during the holiday week ending on Sunday, up from the usual 87, a ministry official said.

Japan is celebrating the annual "Golden Week" public holidays – one of the busiest travel periods of the year, with millions visiting loved ones around the country and abroad.

Japanese authorities have so far carried out onboard medical inspections on flights from Canada, Mexico and the United States, but Health Minister Yoichi Masuzoe has hinted at expanding the inspections to flights from other places.

"This is an unprecedented quarantine operation since Narita airport opened" in 1978, the official said.

"We never thought that tens of thousands of passengers could arrive at the airport at the same time and we would inspect them one by one."

Nearly one million people are expected to pass through the airport from April 24 through May 7, an airport official said. But the actual number is expected to be lower due to public fears about travelling amid the epidemic.

Japan has not yet reported any confirmed cases of the A(H1N1) flu virus, which has killed more than 20 people in Mexico and has infected hundreds of people, in Mexico and 17 other countries.

A Japanese woman in her 40s who developed flu symptoms after returning from the United States has tested negative for H1N1 flu, local government officials said on Monday.

An American baby isolated after arriving in Tokyo from the United States also tested negative for the virus.


- AFP/so