The first case of swine flu in Romania was reported at a thirty-year-old woman who came back from the United States on May 23, announced the head of the Romanian Society for Epidemiology, Geza Molnar.
The woman is now hospitalized at the Matei Bals Infectious Disease Institute in Bucharest together with her family.
Romanian
Health Minister Ion Bazac also confirmed today the first swine flu case
in Romania and stressed that it is crucial at the moment to identify
all persons the woman had come in contact with.
The woman presented coughs and fever of over 38 degrees.
The
first tests taken from the suspected person and run at the Cantacuzino
Institute confirmed the swine flu infection. However, the samples were
also sent to the specialized laboratory in London, which can confirm
the result in 72 hours the most.
“It is 99 percent certain we are dealing with the first case of swine flu in Romania,” said Bazac.
Bazac
had earlier stated Romania has the capacity to produce a monthly output
of seven million vaccine shots against the swine flu, with the first
shots available starting with September.
Romania
is thus one of the eight European countries able to produce the
anti-flu vaccine, alongside France, Great Britain, the Netherlands,
Switzerland, Italy, Germany and Hungary.
The
Health Ministry intensified the surveillance on airports and at border
crossing points. It also distributed enough anti-flu medicines to cure
several thousands of people to the infectious diseases hospitals in the
capital and throughout the country.
The
World Health Organization (WHO) raised to 5 the alert level on the
pandemic potential of the new swine flu virus type A/N1H1 which is
transmitted from human to human and spread in Mexico and the United
States and now Europe.
The last balance of the WHO talked of 12,954 confirmed cases of swine flu in 46 countries, out of which 92 were deadly.
