French authorities on Wednesday quarantined around 47
students, most of them believed to be Spanish, after they tested positive for
swine flu, while attending a summer French language course at a school in
France.
Henri Welschinger, acting director of the La Salle Saint-Nicolas Catholic
school, in Issy-les-Moulineaux, said all the students would be sent home.
"We are closing the centre, that's it. That is the end of activities for this
summer," he said.
Welschinger said the school would be prepared if swine flu returned when school
resumed.
Meanwhile, France's Education Ministry announced it had already prepared nearly
300 hours of educational programming for radio and television to allow those
affected by school closures to follow their lessons, the Le Parisien daily
reported.
The European Union meanwhile announced that no timetable had yet been
established for when a swine flu vaccine would be available to the public across
the continent.
Speaking in Brussels on
Wednesday, the European Health Commissioner said that rushing the production of
a vaccine could have a negative effect.
"We don't want to put the vaccine in the market, running the risk of creating
more problems than non-vaccination. So, we prefer to wait and have an authorised
vaccine, which will be safe for our people," said Androulla Vassiliou.
Vassiliou added that the 27 member states had yet to come up with a cohesive
plan to ensure that high-risk groups in the population were vaccinated before
the general population.
In Britain, Prime Minister Gordon Brown on Wednesday sought to reassure the
public over the virus and announced a new service to deal with increasing
numbers of swine flu cases in Britain.
"From the end of this week, the National Pandemic Flu Service in England will be
up and running. It will quickly diagnose people who have swine flu and it will
give them the opportunity to get antivirals direct from local centres," Brown
told reporters during his monthly news conference in London.
In Cairo, also on Wednesday, regional leaders were meeting for an emergency
session at the headquarters of the Regional Office for the Eastern Mediterranean
(EMRO), a regional branch of the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Arab health ministers agreed on Wednesday to ban certain people, including the
elderly and young children, from travelling on the yearly Islamic pilgrimage to
Mecca, in an effort to contain the spread of swine flu.
Doctor Hussein Gezairy, WHO Regional Director for the Eastern Mediterranean
region, said that Riyadh will add requirements to the process of getting a visa
to Saudi Arabia, where Mecca is located.
Saudi Health Minister Doctor Abdullah Al-Rabeeah said that everyone "involved
with the pilgrimage season, whether labourers or health sector workers or
military and security personnel overseeing the process or any other workers,
everybody will follow the same requirements and procedures for the pilgrims,
including all the necessary vaccinations."
The Hajj is one of the five pillars of Islam - and all able-bodied Muslims are
required to perform it at least once in their lifetime if they can afford it.
It attracts about three million people every year to the holy cities of Mecca
and Medina.
Hundreds of thousands more Muslims also perform Omra, the voluntary lesser
pilgrimage that can be completed at any other time of the year.
Saudi and international health experts have already recommended that children,
pregnant women, the elderly and those with chronic diseases stay away from hajj
this year.
Meanwhile, the US government called for several thousand volunteers to start
rolling up their sleeves for the first swine flu shots, in a race to test
whether a new vaccine really will protect against this virus before its expected
rebound later in the year.
Eight medical centres around the country are enrolling for a series of studies
directed by the National Institutes of Health, and the first shots should go
into volunteers' arms by the second week of August.
The worldwide death toll from swine flu is more than 700, according to the World
Health Organisation.
Source : Associated Press
