The Hindu : Tamil Nadu / Chennai News : Two students test positive

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Sunday, Aug 23, 2009
ePaper | Mobile/PDA Version

Tamil Nadu

Tamil Nadu - Chennai

Two students test positive

Staff Reporter

CHENNAI: Two students of a school at Tiruvannamalai have tested positive for swine flu after they returned from a sports tournament in Pune, V.K. Subburaj, Principal Secretary, Health, said here on Saturday.

He was addressing a conference on ‘Safe Chennai’ organised by the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), Chennai zone.

Addressing concerns related to the flu, he said while the situation was largely under control, the public could do well by adhering to the advisory issued by the government.

“Though we had issued a travel advisory asking people to avoid visiting flu-hit places such as Pune and Satara, the school in Tiruvannamalai ignored it. Sixteen children who were part of this group are reported to have developed flu-like symptoms.”

Though the disease was well under control in the State, people should avoid travel as much as possible. Chennai and Coimbatore had emerged as focal points of the flu as a lot of people in the cities were frequent travellers, he said.

There was no need to hit the panic button as of the 6,000 suspected flu cases tested at the King Institute, Guindy, only 90 had turned out to be positive. Besides three government labs, nine private labs in the State had been approved for testing suspected swine flu cases. The state agencies were thus well prepared to tackle the disease.

He suggested that people avoid using green masks as these offered little protection from the flu.

“I have seen many parents forcing their children to wear the masks. This is unnecessary.”

He said that only if somebody developed serious flu-like symptoms such as high fever, accompanied with breathing problems and diarrhoea, they should go to the authorised labs for testing, not otherwise.

Printer friendly page
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Tamil Nadu