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HONG KONG - Hong Kong officials on Wednesday confirmed the second case of Influenza A (H1N1) in the city, and said the patient was a local man who had returned from the United States.
The 24-year-old patient was being held in isolation in hospital, Thomas Tsang, the controller of the Centre for Health Protection told reporters.
Six people who sat near the man on his flight from San Francisco were also being held in quarantine, along with the man's family members who met him at the airport on Monday evening, Tsang said.
A further 45 people who sat near him on his journey had already left Hong Kong.
The positive test comes almost two weeks after the first confirmed case of the A(H1N1) virus, a Mexican man, arrived in the city.
He was held in quarantine for seven days, and around 350 guests and staff at the hotel where he briefly stayed were also detained.
Hong Kong's government received some criticism for its shutdown of the Metropark hotel after the first case was confirmed, but insisted it was necessary to try to contain the virus.
The city is very nervous about infectious diseases following the outbreak of the SARS virus in 2003, which killed 300 people here and 800 worldwide after one carrier spread the disease in a Hong Kong hotel.
The city became a virtual ghost town and officials are desperate to avoid a repeat.
Tsang said that a wider quarantine was not necessary after the latest case as the man had not moved widely among the population after arriving on the CX879 Cathay flight.
The infection was discovered after the man approached health officials at the airport after arriving Monday evening.
"He consulted a clinic at the airport and was taken to hospital. This patient did not enter the city," said Tsang.
The man was in a stable condition and had only shown mild flu symptoms, Tsang added.
A second Hong Kong man who had come into contact with the infected patient during his trip to the United States and since flown into the city had tested negative for swine flu.
Health Secretary York Chow said Tuesday that the lessons learned from the quarantine of the Metropark hotel meant Hong Kong did not expect to quarantine an entire hotel again if a guest was infected with H1N1 flu.
However, he said that authorities were still prepared to close schools or cancel public gatherings if there was a more widespread outbreak in the southern Chinese city.
More than 5,200 confirmed cases of H1N1 flu have been reported in 30 countries, according to the World Health Organization, which said 61 people have died from the virus.
China on Wednesday confirmed the second case of H1N1 flu in the mainland, saying a student who recently returned from Canada had tested positive for the virus.
- AFP/ir
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