Gulf health ministers on Saturday urged citizens to use caution when travelling to virus-hit countries. The ministers meeting in Doha agreed to tighten controls at airports and ensure the availability of vaccines. No suspected cases of the virus have been reported in the six Gulf Cooperation Council states. “We should not exaggerate the matter more than it merits,” GCC secretary general Abdulrahman Al-Attiyah said. “We have agreed to... urge caution with regards to travelers to the areas where the disease has spread,” he said, adding that travelers passing through airports in the Gulf will be checked. Health ministers agreed that any suspected cases should be reported to the joint Gulf health authorities as soon as they emerge, a statement said. Not as serious as feared Meanwhile, the World Health Organization (WHO) said on Saturday that 15 countries have reported 615 infections with the new flu virus A-H1N1, widely known as swine flu. Mexico, the epicenter of the disease, has cut its suspected death toll to 101 from as many as 176 because of test samples coming back negative in its labs, the government said late Friday, in a sign the flu pandemic the WHO says is “imminent” may not be as severe as first feared. Hong Kong hotel crisis Hong Kong sealed the downtown Metro Park Hotel with hundreds of tourists and employees inside as authorities worked Saturday to prevent an outbreak of swine flu, searching for anyone who had contact with a Mexican tourist who brought the virus into the territory. Hong Kong Secretary for Food and Health York Chow said the territory was facing “a critical moment.” Sixty people at the Metro Park who had mild symptoms were taken to hospitals for follow-up, Thomas Tsang, controller of Hong Kong's Center of Health Protection, was quoted as saying on radio RTHK's Web site Saturday. Chow said the government has already tracked down 19 people who sat near the Mexican on the plane and isolated them, but was still looking for his taxi drivers. Worries in India In New Delhi, the state-run Ram Manohar Lohia hospital was Saturday monitoring one suspected swine flu patient who arrived from abroad, but tests on six other people have proved negative, the Press Trust of India said. So far, no cases of swine flu have been confirmed in India. But there are worries any outbreak could spread quickly in the nation where many people live in congested, unsanitary conditions. The Indian government has said it plans to raise its stockpile of oseltamivir from one million doses to 10 million to deal with any outbreak. Oseltamivir is the generic version of Swiss drugmaker Roche's Tamiflu used to treat the virus. Egypt begins culling Egypt began a controversial slaughter of the nation's 250,000 pigs in earnest on Saturday, despite the WHO saying there was no evidence the animals were transmitting swine flu to humans. One hundred pigs were slaughtered in Alexandria and government workers began transporting an estimated 28,000 pigs in Cairo's Ard el-Liwa neighborhood to slaughterhouses, the state news agency MENA reported. Confirmed infections According to figures from national authorities, Mexico has 381, the United States has 143, Canada 51, Britain 13, Spain 15, Germany 6, New Zealand 4, Israel 3, Costa Rica 2, France 2, Austria 1, Benin 1, Denmark 1, Hong Kong 1, Netherlands 1, South Korea 2 and Switzerland 1. The WHO gives in some cases lower figures: United States 140, Canada 34, Germany 4, Israel 2.
