Siffrorna har stigit dramatiskt nu under helgens gång!
Nyheterna varnar för att fler kommer bli smittade, siffran steg drastiskt från 7 till 90 konfirmerade fall, och dessa bara i Kansai area??
Vad är det som händer,, blir nu frågan!!
Varför bara här i Kansai, Osaka regionen?
I dag, nyss på väg till jobbet så har maskanvändarna ökat..
Kan nästan konstatera att ca 50% av alla jag såg bar mask!!
Vad kommer ske?
Hur skall detta sluta?
Blir det som i Amerika, att många blir sjuka helt plötsligt, men efter några timmar avtar det!?
Vi får väll se!!
Från Nikkei Shinbun (Nyhets tidning):
Monday, May 18, 2009
OSAKA (Kyodo)--The number of cases of domestic new flu infections in Japan hit 92 on Sunday after a total of 84 high school and college students as well as teachers and others in Osaka and Hyogo prefectures were confirmed to have been infected with the new strain of influenza A.
The confirmations followed the discovery Saturday of Japan's first eight domestic infections of new flu in Hyogo, which adjoins Osaka. A World Health Organization expert said community-level transmission may have begun in Japan, which could lead the WHO to raise its new flu pandemic alert to the highest level of 6 from the current 5.
The WHO has launched a full-fledged analysis of the situation in Japan.
In response to the latest development, Chief Cabinet Secretary Takeo Kawamura told reporters, ''We need to be fully prepared to prevent the further spread of infections.''
Of the 84 newly confirmed infections, 39 were detected in Osaka and 45 in Hyogo. The new patients include a girl in the sixth grade aged 11 in Yao, Osaka Prefecture.
Local authorities said more than 1,000 kindergartens, and elementary, junior and senior high schools in the two prefectures have decided to suspend classes for certain periods following the confirmation of new flu infections.
Osaka Gov. Toru Hashimoto convened a meeting of a new flu task force on Sunday and decided to ask facilities such as movie theaters to suspend operations to prevent the spread of the flu.
Railway, supermarket and convenience store employees in Hyogo, Osaka and Kyoto started wearing masks in line with instructions from their companies. Some retailers told high school and college students who work part-time not to come to work for a while.
In Ibaraki city in Osaka and Kobe, where many new flu infections were confirmed, anxious consumers rushed to drug stores and medical masks sold out at a number of shops.
Asics Corp., a sports and leisure products manufacturer based in Kobe, decided to allow its employees to avoid commuting to and from work during rush hours and to exempt those who cannot leave their children or aged family members due to the closure of daycare and nursing facilities from coming to work.
The 92 infections exclude four cases discovered during onboard quarantine inspections at Narita International Airport among a group of Japanese students and teachers who flew home from the United States after a trip to Canada.
Of the four, two students and a teacher have been declared free of the flu and have been discharged from hospitals.
The local authorities in Osaka said many of the new cases detected in the prefecture were connected to Kansai Okura Senior High School in the city of Ibaraki and none of the students had traveled overseas recently.
A total of 143 Okura high school students had been absent from the school this month due to flu-like symptoms such as fever. The privately run school said it will be closed from Monday through Saturday.
Many newly confirmed cases in Hyogo were linked to Kobe High School and Hyogo High School run by the prefecture. Experts suspect group infections at the schools in Osaka and Hyogo.
On Saturday, the government shifted its new flu action program from ''a period of overseas outbreak'' to ''an early period of domestic outbreak'' and called for companies and schools in the areas concerned to allow individuals to avoid commuting during rush hours.
Commenting on the discovery of the first domestic infections in Japan, Masato Tashiro, chief of the National Institute of Infectious Diseases' influenza virus research laboratory, said that several hundred people in Japan may already be infected with the H1N1 strain of influenza A.
Tashiro, a member of a WHO emergency committee, told reporters at the organization's headquarters in Geneva on Saturday that it is still unknown how the new flu virus entered Japan and that the infections in the country could amount to sustained human-to-human transmission in communities.
The WHO upgraded its flu pandemic alert level to phase 4 on April 27 and phase 5 on April 29, following the confirmation of widespread infections and deaths in North America. The highest stage of phase 6 refers to community-level outbreaks in two different WHO regions.
On a global level, 8,739 people in 40 countries and regions had been confirmed as being infected with the new flu as of 10:30 p.m. Sunday Japan time, while 75 in four countries had died.