A day after Peru and Latin America’s first case of swine flu was confirmed, Health Minister Oscar Ugarte said Thursday that an additional battery of tests on an Argentine woman hospitalized in Peru revealed that she did not have swine flu.
“She has the A H1 virus, which is another type of influenza,” said Ugarte in comments published in daily La República. “The patient is stable and visibly getting better.”
The patient, 27-year old Alejandrina Cocci, was aboard a Copa Airlines Mexico-Panama-Argentina flight with no scheduled stopover in Lima, when she was unexpectedly and suspiciously dropped off in Peru’s capital after it was discovered that she was ill, and the pilots decided to make an emergency landing.
But, according to Pedro Velásquez, Director of Lima’s Jorge Chávez International Airport Sanitary Unit, the emergency landing was authorized only because the Copa Airlines captain misstated her syptoms to the control tower.
“The captain said that she was suffering from hypertension, nausea and vomiting,” said Velásquez in comments to daily El Comercio. “But the symptoms were clearly those of a respiratory infection.”
Peru’s Health Ministry put all of Peru’s health care facilities and hospitals on yellow alert on Wednesday, after the case was confirmed. All incoming flights from Mexico have been suspended, and passengers arriving from all other destinations, including the U.S., will be submitted to a rigorous checkup.
Other potential cases reported in Peru include: a Mexican oil field worker in Trompeteros, Loreto, a tourist guide that worked closely with Mexican tourists in Cuzco, and a Lima resident who travelled to Canada but stopped off in Mexico before landing in Peru.
Swine influenza, or “swine flu”, is a highly contagious acute respiratory disease of pigs, caused by one of several swine influenza A viruses. The virus is spread among pigs by aerosols, direct and indirect contact, and asymptomatic carrier pigs.
In humans, clinical symptoms are similar to seasonal influenza, but reported clinical presentation ranges broadly from asymptomatic infection to severe pneumonia resulting in death.
According to the World Health Organization, or WHO, “if a swine virus establishes efficient human-to human transmission, it can cause an influenza pandemic. The impact of a pandemic caused by such a virus is difficult to predict: it depends on virulence of the virus, existing immunity among people, cross protection by antibodies acquired from seasonal influenza infection and host factors.”
The WHO has confirmed 13 cases and 4 deaths in Canada, 64 cases and 1 death in the U.S., 26 cases and 7 deaths in Mexico, 2 cases in Israel, 4 cases in Spain, 2 cases in the U.K., and 3 cases in New Zealand.
