Health services on alert as bird flu suspected in Cyprus

THE public health services were yesterday on full alert after it emerged an EU citizen displaying flu like symptoms at Limassol general hospital could possibly have avian influenza.

The man, who arrived at Larnaca airport from Germany yesterday, became unwell on his way to Limassol. He was taken to hospital where it emerged he had recently spent long periods of time in Thailand.

According to CyBC radio, the doctors ran a series of tests on the patient to screen for the H5 bird flu virus. The tests were sent to Greece for analysis, the results of which are expected back tomorrow. If the tests come back positive, samples will be sent to the UK to test whether it’s the deadly H5N1 strain of the virus.

Health Minister Charis Charalambous said all precautions had been taken and the man had been placed in isolation. In the meantime the European Centre for Disease Control had been notified as would the airlines the man had used so as to alert the other passengers, he said.

The Health Minister could not last night be reached for further comment.

just curious.....they ran a "series of tests" did it include the rapid test?.....no mention

Candles, good find. Please keep us informed. This is the kind of article that creeps me out.

GREAT POST CANDLES "THANKS"

Hey common guys , tens of thousands of people go down with ordinary
old seasonal influenza in Thailand each year . The chances that this is
AI are very , very low .

Thankyou for you kindness and please excuse spell arears , windows 95 here old faithfull does not spell check , she's tired and just refuses , fingers faster than the brain errors happen , keyboard sticks , screen humms sounds like a clothes dryer but it works so hard , only drops out 30 times a night but I still love her . Replacement coming soon . We all work hard here for the forum and each other and all our love ones. I shy from posting threads can't delete event and am cautious to event , Cyprus the question of when they would start checking passengers , before test results ? or wait for results ? I was unsure ?made me post . Did USA check the 59 folks planes over the years.? You would think we would have noticed that in the news .                                  

Was wondering if there have been any updates on this today.

Candles - no criticism was intended at all , and I am glad you brought the
case to to our attention.  I just wanted to bring the situation in to what I regarded as its  correct perspective.

Candles - I have read the stuff below , and  understand your initial  interest.
 
I can only vaguely recall scares related to passengers arriving in Australian airports, and I certainly have not read much about fellow travellers being checked.

All that may however be about to change because 
a temperature scanner ( for humans ) has been introduced at Cairns airport as a trial . Hopefully other Australian airports will introduce  them soon .

It seems to me that about the only times people pay attention to sick
passengers are if they can't walk of the plane or they put up their hand to say they are sick and want help. 

I note that there is a great deal of interest from the airline industry
in introducing  air filtering  . I believe there are a number of new filtering
systems available which will remove about 99.99 % of pathogens .

That may protect most of the passengers but I still would not like to
be a passenger sitting next to a H5N1 case.

False alarm thank god.