Governments across the Asia-Pacific region have been activating pandemic protection programmes to fend off the potential spread of swine flu.
The virus is already suspected of having reached New Zealand, where 10 schoolchildren who had recently returned from a holiday in Mexico have been isolated while samples are being tested for the disease, and Australia, where five people are undergoing similar tests.
Asia has raw memories of the devastating economic and social effects of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome, or SARS, and the more recent depredations of so-called bird flu, both of which – like swine flu – are believed to have jumped the species barrier to infect and occasionally kill humans.
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