Mexico's schools cleaned, ready to resume classes
An elderly Chinese couple wear masks as they walk by the hospital in Chengdu, southwest China's Sichuan province yesterday where a 30-year-old man surnamed Bao was hospitalised with a fever after arriving on a flight from the United States via Tokyo and Beijing. China confirmed its first mainland case of swine flu and launched a search for the patient's fellow air passengers to prevent the virus spreading in the world's most populous nation. Photo: AFP
Scoured and disinfected, most of Mexico's primary schools and kindergartens stood ready to welcome back millions of students Monday after a nationwide shutdown ordered to help put a brake on the spread of swine flu.
Children who turned up with symptoms of the illness would be turned away, education officials said.
But it wasn't the countrywide restart that leaders had hoped for. Six of Mexico's 31 states put off reopening schools for another week amid a rise in suspected flu cases in some regions, and a seventh ordered a one-day delay. Some parents were worried about sending their children back so soon.
While Mexicans are feeling a little more relaxed, the swine flu outbreak is continuing to spread around the globe, with international health authorities reporting more than 4,500 confirmed cases in 29 nations. There are 53 deaths tied to the virus 48 in Mexico, three in the US, one in Canada and one in Costa Rica.
The United States now has the most confirmed cases 2,532 in 44 states, more than 900 ahead of Mexico's total, the US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention said Sunday.
In Mexico, crews worked through the weekend to cleanse school buildings and make sure they were stocked with sanitary supplies as 25 million children prepared to resume their studies after a two-week break that began when authorities ordered schools closed in the Mexico City region on April 24 and then the whole country three days later.
"We have cleaned the windows, classrooms, blackboards, floors, bathrooms, everything," Flor Carpio, whose husband is the custodian at Mexico City's Horacio Mann grade school, said Sunday.
At the Rosaura Zapati day care centre in central Mexico City, Miguel Sanchez cleaned a staircase with bleach even though he was not totally convinced that swine flu existed.
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