Julie-Anne Davies, Rick Wallace | May 20, 2009

Article from:  The Australian

THE 27 grade three classmates of Victoria's first confirmed swine flu case, a nine-year-old boy, will be dosed with anti-viral drugs this afternoon and told to stay home in voluntary quarantine until next week.

The boy's 10-year-old brother, who is in grade five at the same inner Melbourne school in Clifton Hill, is also showing symptoms of the virus and if tests due tonight prove positive, then his class will also be given the drugs and told to stay home.

The boys had spent at least a day at the Gold Street School while infectious, Victoria's acting Chief Health Officer Dr Rosemary Lester said today.

Clifton Hill Primary School principal Geoff Warren told The Australian Online that the parents had been asked to collect their children and give consent for health department officers to dispense the anti-viral drugs Tamiflu or Relenza.

"Everyone has reacted very calmly and there's been no sense of panic although maybe in their hearts, a few mums and dads are worried," Mr Warren said.

He said the family of six had returned from a trip to California where they had visited Disneyland. The boys were fine when they came home but began feeling ill on Monday this week," he said.

The family would all be quarantined at home together for the next two weeks, he said. They had all been tested and treated with anti-viral medicine.

A letter from the Victorian Department of Health would be sent home tonight to the families of all 385 pupils at the school explaining the procedures that were now in place. He said an information meeting would also be held.

He said the school was waiting to see if the second child was diagnosed with swine flu before his 24 class-mates would also be advised to take anti-viral medicine and undergo quarantine.

No other students at the school had been ill with the flu.

Government officials are contacting all passengers on QF94 from Los Angeles to Melbourne on May 12 who were sitting close to the boy, who is one of three people in Australia to be diagnosed with swine flu.

"Based on what we know about this form of influenza, passengers on the flight are highly unlikely to become unwell because we strongly believe that the boy was not infectious when he travelled,” Dr Lester said.

Any other passenger on the same flight with concerns should call the Swine Influenza Hotline on 180 2007.

Final confirmation that the boy has human swine influenza H1N1 is expected to come from the World Health Organisation Referencing Laboratory in Melbourne later today.

There is one other Victorian test result pending for a possible human swine influenza case as part of the precautionary testing program.

And NSW Health Minister John Della Bosca announced that a case of the disease had been confirmed in NSW.

The first case of the H1N1 human form of swine influenza in Australia was found in Queensland last month.

The 28-year-old woman, who contracted a mild strain of the disease, flew into Brisbane from Los Angeles on May 7 and is no longer considered infectious.