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Plane arrives for Mexicans held in quarantine
By GILLIAN WONG,Associated Press Writer AP - Wednesday, May 6
BEIJING - Mexicans trapped in China by a swine flu quarantine that their president denounced as discriminatory were picked up by chartered plane to fly home Tuesday, amid a high alert in the region as South Korea confirmed a new case.
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News emerged that citizens of other countries, including the United States, were also being held in isolation in China, which defended the strict measures in the name of public health. Around 200 travelers were also placed under quarantine in the wealthy Southeast Asian nation of Brunei.
A 44-year-old Catholic nun became South Korea's second confirmed swine flu case, a Health Ministry official said Tuesday, although the woman has recovered and was due to be released from a military-run hospital Wednesday.
The nun fell ill after driving the first confirmed patient, also a nun, home from an airport after a trip to Mexico, Chung Eun-kyung said. Mexico has reported 802 of the more than 1,446 confirmed cases of swine flu in 20 countries worldwide.
In China, the chartered Mexican plane landed first in Shanghai in the early afternoon to pick up Mexicans _ a trip announced Monday by their President Felipe Calderon, who complained of a backlash against Mexicans abroad.
Mexican officials say of the 71 Mexicans China had quarantined at hospitals and hotels, none had swine flu symptoms and most had no contact with infected people or places. One Mexican traveler likened the quarantine in Beijing to "a kidnapping."
Amid high security, Mexicans in the capital were spirited away to the airport in a motorcade led by a black Mercedes-Benz police car with flashing lights followed by four ambulances and three unmarked black sedans. The driver and passenger in the front of each ambulance were wearing full biohazard protection suits.
The plane was to go to the southern city of Guangzhou and Hong Kong before flying later Tuesday to Mexico City.
"I think it's unfair that because we have been honest and transparent with the world some countries and places are taking repressive and discriminatory measures because of ignorance and disinformation," Calderon said Monday.
China's Foreign Ministry has denied singling out Mexicans, saying it was purely a medical matter and that it hoped Mexico would be "objective and calm." A plane Beijing sent to Mexico to retrieve its citizens arrived Tuesday in Mexico City.
The American Embassy in Beijing said a pair U.S. citizens were quarantined in a hotel in a suburb of the city, while another two people who had earlier been kept in isolation in the southern cities of Guangzhou and Shenzhen were allowed to leave Monday.
Embassy spokeswoman Susan Stevenson declined to give specifics of the individual cases, citing privacy reasons, but said consular officials were in touch with the travelers and cooperating with Chinese health authorities.
"They were either placed under quarantine because they themselves exhibited symptoms or because they were in proximity to cases of interest to the Chinese authorities, and the consular section of the embassy has been in contact with them," Stevenson said.
China has been accused in the past of not acting quickly enough to combat the spread of diseases, but has put a widespread action plan in place to stop the spread of swine flu.
A group of 29 Canadian university students and a professor have also been quarantined at a hotel in China since the weekend over swine flu fears. Canada has 140 confirmed cases of swine flu. The group does not have any flu symptoms, University of Montreal spokeswoman Sophie Langlois said Monday.
China's Foreign Ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said the students' quarantine was necessary to protect public health and that arrangements had been made for the students' accommodation, food and medical checks.
In Hong Kong, 274 people were three days into a weeklong quarantine in a hotel after a Mexican traveler there was determined to have swine flu. Hong Kong's leader appeared on TV to apologize to them, and the government offered free hotel lodging and free Hong Kong Disneyland tickets to travelers who wanted to stay on after the quarantine as a gesture of thanks.
"We can appreciate the boredom, frustration and dissatisfaction that a quarantine may have caused you ... but to contain a virus which we don't know much about, there is a need for strict action when we discover the first case," Donald Tsang said.
Hong Kong's Secretary for Food and Health York Chow told reporters that the Mexican swine flu patient was not ready to be discharged yet.
In Southeast Asia, about 200 passengers who flew from the U.K. to Brunei, the oil-rich sultanate on Borneo island, were under quarantine in a hospital because of swine flu concerns, after three of them showed fever symptoms, an official said.
Rahmah Said, the director general of health services, did not give details of the travelers' nationalities or their point of departure but said all the travelers had recently been to countries hit by swine flu cases. Initial tests showed the passengers did not have swine flu, she said.
___
Associated Press writers Mark Stevenson in Mexico City, Min Lee in Hong Kong, Hyung-jin Kim in Seoul and Henry Sanderson and Christopher Bodeen in Beijing contributed to this report.
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