Quarantine ends for 169 passengers and crew members

Star: PUTRAJAYA: The 149 flight passengers and 20 crew members are due to be released from home qua­ran­tine today, Health Ministry deputy director-general Datuk Dr Ramlee Rahmat said yesterday.
The 169 people who had been monitored by the ministry over the last one week were from Malaysia Airlines Flight MH091 and AirAsia Flight AK5358.
However, 70 passengers and one cabin crew member from the two flights had not responded to the ministry’s call to come forward.
“The A (H1N1) patient in Sungai Buloh Hos­pi­tal and the one in Penang Hospital are up and about in the ward,” he told a press conference.
There are 9,245 confirmed A (HINI) cases and 75 deaths worldwide to date.
The number of countries affected reached 40 yesterday, the latest being Chile with two cases.
There was no new case in Malaysia apart from the two 21-year-old male and female students who returned from the United States and were detected last week, he said.
The man who was warded at Sungai Buloh Hospital was confirmed A (H1N1) last Friday and the woman in Penang Hospital the next day.
She had boarded Flight AK5358 from the Low-Cost Carrier Terminal in Sepang to Penang last Wednesday.
In Sabah, Dr Ramlee said two foreign tourists were quarantined in a house in Kota Kina­ba­lu because they had flown in the Cathay Pa­ci­fic Flight CX831 where an A (HINI) case was onboard.
The flight from the United States landed in Hong Kong last Saturday where the two took a connecting flight, Dragon Air Flight KA061, to Sabah.
Dr Ramlee said the two had landed at Kota Kinabalu last Sunday before the Sabah Health Department tracked them down.
Both were fine and should be released from their home quarantine this Saturday, he said.
The ministry had tested 134 suspected cases between April 27 and yesterday and 130 were confirmed negative.
Meanwhile, Bernama reports that six people, including two Swedish tourists, are under quarantine in Pahang since May 13 for suspected A (H1N1).
Pahang Health committee chairman Datuk Hoh Khai Mun said that the couple from Sweden had been quarantined at a hotel in the Jerantut district while a family of four had been quarantined at their house in Bentong.
None of them had shown any symptoms of the disease so far, he said.