Charlot Zahra
The swine flu outbreak in Malta took a turn for the worse yesterday with the confirmation of 15 new cases of swine flu in the past 24 hours, mostly concentrated in Gozo.
Ten new cases of swine flu were confirmed by Tuesday at noon, eight in Gozo and two in Malta, all involving females of Maltese nationality.
Three new cases were reported in Gharb, involving a 38-year-old woman and two girls aged eight and 10, bringing the total number of confirmed cases in this locality to 10 following the celebration of the Gharb village feast, which sparked the outbreak in Gozo.
Another two cases each were reported in the neighbouring Gozitan villages of Xaghra and Ghasri – an 18-year-old woman and a 21-year-old woman were infected in Xaghra, while a 44-year-old woman and an eight-year-old girl were reported as infected in Ghasri.
A 17-year-old girl from Sannat was also reported as infected with swine flu. None of the cases reported in Gozo so far were travel-related.
The other two cases that were confirmed yesterday involved a 24-year-old woman from Luqa and a 21-year-old woman from Mosta. In both cases, the origins of the infection still had to be determined.
Three more cases were confirmed in Gharb on Monday night – three men aged 18 years, 20 years and 16 years respectively. As with the other cases diagnosed till now in Gharb, all of them were not travel related. The other two cases that were confirmed on Monday night involved a ten-year-old Australian boy, whose case was travel-related, and a 20-year-old Swiss girl from Msida, whose case was not travel-related.
Earlier on Monday, three people – a 24-year-old woman, and two men, a 22-year-old and a 42-year-old, had already been diagnosed positive with swine flu after coming in contact during the Gharb village feast last week with a 16-year-old from the same village who was tested positive on Sunday.
The Health Ministry said yesterday evening that the situation in Gharb and other Gozitan villages was being “closely monitored” following the high incidence of cases on the sister Island.
Two confirmed cases of swine flu were no longer being held in quarantine and were now well.
One patient – a 19-year-old London woman – was still being hospitalised and was reported to be “responding well to treatment,” the Health Ministry added.
The other patients were said to be “doing well and responding to treatment”.
Another two Maltese have been registered as suspected cases after they were found to be suffering from influenza type A but not the H1N1 subtype, which was causing the global pandemic after being discovered in Mexico in April.
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