Montrealers under quarantine don’t have swine flu: report

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This article was published 25/04/2009 (6013 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

MONTREAL – Quebec’s health ministry and hospital officials confirmed Saturday that the province has no confirmed cases of the swine flu that has gripped Mexico.

But they refused to comment on media reports that a woman placed in quarantine subsequently tested negative for the flu virus.

“We don’t have any confirmed cases, that’s what’s important,” Karine White, spokeswoman for Quebec’s ministry of health, told The Canadian Press.

“If there is a confirmed case, you’ll be informed.”

Lakeshore General Hospital spokesman Louis-Pascal Cyr told a national news agency Saturday that the two patients were in isolation for further investigation as a precaution after returning from Mexico. One of the patients was later released and both tested negative for the virus, the news agency reported.

“Our infection control doctors are in direct link with the public health (department),” Cyr told The Canadian Press.

“Whenever a doctor suspects something we call them. It’s our people that told public health the results of the investigation. We were in touch with them today.”

But Cyr wouldn’t comment on any specific case seen at the hospital.

White said the province’s health authorities had been placed on high alert.

“It could happen that people are put in isolation if they show symptoms and doctors believe it’s necessary,” she said.

“If someone comes back from Mexico with flu-like symptoms, I don’t think we’ll take any chances.”

On Friday, Canadian public health officials said there were no confirmed cases of swine flu in humans in Canada. They advised anyone returning home from Mexico with symptoms to notify their health-care provider of where they had been.

In Ottawa, a government official said Saturday that Prime Minister Stephen Harper was briefed this weekend on the status of the swine flu outbreak, which is predominantly affecting Mexico, but has shown up in parts of the United States.

Mexico is struggling with a new strain of swine flu that has killed 68 and sickened more than 1,000. In the United States, a total of 10 cases have been reported in California, Texas and Kansas, and eight students at a high school in Queens, N.Y., probably have swine flu, but officials are unsure of the strain type.

Monica Whelan, the daughter of a Montreal woman in hospital, was quoted by a national news outlet as saying her mother has a fever and is coughing following her return from Mexico.

And relatives who live in Mexico are sick as well, she said.

“With news that it’s been going around Mexico, my mother went right away to the hospital,” Whelan said.

“Her niece just ended up in the hospital (in Mexico). She couldn’t breathe. So we’re really, really worried right now.”

White couldn’t confirm that any patients at the Lakeshore General Hospital had been placed under quarantine after coming back from Mexico with flu-like symptoms.

“It’s not the type of information we receive,” she said. “We only get information on the confirmed cases. If a patient is tested for the virus and is positive, then we’re told about it.”

White said the Quebec government was following the issue closely and was in contact with their federal counterparts and with the World Health Organization.

She said the province’s hospitals and clinics had all been advised of the virus.