South Korea"s health authorities on Wednesday reported three more deaths from the H1N1 flu virus, raising the nation"s death toll to 45 and indicating that the highly contagious disease is turning into a pandemic. The latest victims were a three-year-old baby, two men in their 30s and 50s, the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Family Affairs said in a statement. "The baby had no symptoms of pneumonia, but there was a possibility that the virus might have intruded into his brain," said Kwon Joon-wook, an official at Korea Center for Disease Control & Prevention. Hundreds of schools in South Korea closed voluntarily and soldiers were virtually banned from going out of their barracks at weekends, a day after the government raised the national alert for the H1N1 flu to the highest "red" level. Nearly 10,000 people were found infected with the virus a day, according to government data.
