More people across the world were confirmed as having contracted the A/H1N1 flu on Monday and Greece has become the latest country to be added to the tally of affected nations.
Greece confirmed Monday the first A/ H1N1 case in a young man who returned from the United States last Saturday.
He was tested positive as soon as being sent to the hospital, said Deputy Health Minister Giorgos Papageorgiou.
Mexico, which has seen most of the A/H1N1 deaths, said on Monday that the country's confirmed deaths from the flu had risen to 70, with total confirmed infections reaching 3,646.
"Two deaths that took place on April 19 and May 13 in Mexico City were confirmed" to be related to the A/H1N1 flu, Mexico's Health Ministry said in a statement.
In the United States, the number of confirmed and probable human A/H1N1 flu cases has risen to 5,123 in 48 U.S. states, with five deaths, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported on Monday.
The figures didn't include one confirmed death from the new flu in New York.
CDC officials have said they expect the flu to spread to all 50 states, causing severe disease and some deaths.
The number of A/H1N1 cases in Japan has reached 144 after 48 more infections were confirmed in Osaka and Hyogo prefectures, local health officials said on Monday.
The number may keep rising as many in the region reported symptoms of the new flu, they said.
Japanese government on Monday convened an emergency task force meeting to discuss countermeasures on the spread of the epidemic.
At the meeting, Prime Minister Taro Aso called the public to remain calm, saying the Japanese government has no plans to ask citizens to refrain from holding meetings or scale down corporate activity.
The World Health Organization reported on Monday that there were so far a total of 8,829 confirmed A/H1N1 flu cases in 40 countries and regions across the globe. The number does not include the case reported in Greece.
WHO chief Margaret Chan on Monday cautioned against the unpredictability of the A/H1N1 flu although she admitted the virus "presently causes mainly mild illness, with few deaths, outside the outbreak in Mexico."
She noted that the presence of the new virus has now been confirmed in several countries in the southern hemisphere, where epidemics of seasonal influenza will soon be picking up.
Chan was also worried about possible interaction between the new H1N1 virus and the H5N1 avian influenza virus, which is now firmly established in poultry in several countries.
(Xinhua News Agency May 19, 2009)
