The Incheon International Airport quarantine office has toughened a rapid antigen test to screen out possibly affected people on the spot. Those detected will immediately be sent to hospitals for treatment and isolation.
``If anyone has a high fever, feels lethargic and sick, has a runny nose or severely itchy throats for a week after a trip, he or she is advised to report to the nearest public healthcare center,'' Shin Sang-sook, a KCDC official said.
The government is also looking more closely at pork imports.
The Korean National Veterinarian Research and Quarantine Service said Sunday it would toughen inspections on sampled American and Mexican pork from Monday. ``There's no possibility that the meat will give people human swine flu, but the measure is expected to settle public anxiety toward the swine influenza A (H1N1), the newest strain of the virus detected,'' an institution spokesman said.
According to the Ministry for Food, Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Korea imported 200 tons of Mexican and 28,700 tons of American pork in the first quarter. Per capita pork consumption totaled 19.6 kilograms last year.
``It's safe to eat pork as it's commonly heated above 71 degrees Celsius,'' a ministry official said.
The KCDC also advised outbound travelers to monitor their food consumption while traveling.
The Joongang Ilbo also has the story. The BBC website answers some basic questions about the virus.
25 comments:
At least we know the true strength of kimchi. Korea is the country most scared. I am glad that they are taking measures because men never wash their hands in public bathrooms and people spread germs everywhere on everything. It's disgusting! (In five years here, I've seen 5 wash their hands in the bathroom, and yes, I keep count because it is such a rare occurance.
Doesn't the regular flu kill around 36,000 people in the U.S. each year? Doesn't that make it pretty damn deadly in its own right, especially with close to 100 people a day dying from it there.
And, so far, this version of the flu hasn't killed anyone in the U.S., all 81 have been in Mexico.
Damn media just doing what it does best--whipping up hysteria.
Agree with John.
SARS, Avian Flu, Hantavirus, blah blah blah...
All were supposed to be the global epidemic. None really were.
Damn you 24-hour news cycle!
Jamie wrote:
All were supposed to be the global epidemic. None really were.
That's right. And they were not because of the heightened measures taken by the authorities. This is an essential problem of public health: you are called incompetent for your failures and chicken little for your successes.
SARS, for example, killed nearly 10% of the 8000+ who contracted it, a rate far higher than the flu (which is also taken very seriously). It was stopped by a quick and global effort to identify, quarantine, and treat. Had they not done that, far more might have died.
(Frankly, we should go back to calling "the flu" influenza, so maybe more people will take its life-endangering nature more seriously.)
And it was the ROK government's tightening of regulations at the airport which prevented any cases from showing up in Korea. Knock on wood, since an outbreak could easily spread to South Korea if the source is not discovered in time.
"Damn media just doing what it does best--whipping up hysteria."
In other words, water is wet, grass is brown (hehe - who told you it was green?), and gravity is usually a pretty good thing.
Before Koreans begins whipping out the masks (oh, wait) or panicking about meat from the US (oh, wait yet again), let's try a modicum - a single jeon - of common sense. Cook your pork. Stay away from people that look sick - whether the flu or 'swine flu' they're still sick and you probably don't want it.
I applaud the public health officials for their efforts - and wish there a better way to reward the proactive approach instead of laying blame.
Well, yeah, common sense is good. And perhaps they're, scientifically speaking, going too far by looking at imported pork. But I don't know how you can fault the Korean government for doing what it's doing. Everything it's done so far---that we've seen in the articles---is perfectly reasonable.
Kushibo wrote:
"the flu (which is also taken very seriously)"
Not seriously enough for the 36,000 Americans who die from it each year. I wonder what the real world death toll is from this killer disease? It's just too bad that the governments and media aren't doing their jobs in protecting the public from it. It has to be called something more menacing like "swine flu" before they get off their rears and take action and call it a pandemic. What utter nonsense!
If they really wanted to protect the public, they would be more proactive and keep sick people off of airplanes. However, that wouldn't be good for the airlines bottom line and the kickbacks politicos receive from lobbyists.
John from Daejeon wrote:
Not seriously enough for the 36,000 Americans who die from it each year.
I don't entirely disagree with you, but the question then is: What would you have them do differently?
Did you get a flu vaccine this year? Did your family? Should flu vaccines be required? For better or worse, in the US there are a lot of people who put their freedom to choose not to be vaccinated over the safety of the one in 8500 who die on average every year from influenza in the US.
And if we make influenza vaccines mandatory, how do we compensate the handful who die from the vaccines themselves? What other vaccines do we require?
I wonder what the real world death toll is from this killer disease?
It's hundreds of thousands, but there are bigger killers than that, like malaria. Unfortunately, with as few dollars as there are going to help poorer countries with public health concerns, it's a Hobson's choice about where the prevention dollars go.
It's just too bad that the governments and media aren't doing their jobs in protecting the public from it.
The Bush Administration has drastically cut some food inspections, at a time when 5000 Americans die every year from food-borne illness and we're pushing to export said food to Korea and Japan.
But Bush deserves credit for expanding public health centers that promote immunization.
Now, what could be done is dropping our allergy to government handouts and recognize that it's in the country's interest to have as many people immunized as possible. Toward that end, free influenza vaccinations, like we have in Orange County (I went with my mom to get one last year) are better than the ones in Hawaii where you have to pay $5 or $10 for the shot.
It has to be called something more menacing like "swine flu" before they get off their rears and take action and call it a pandemic. What utter nonsense!
To be fair, influenza and swine flu (or SARS) are in different danger categories. By way of analogy, influenza prevention is like getting kids to be careful about pedestrian safety, while prevention of potential pandemics of potentially explosive bugs like SARS, West nile, swine flu, etc., are like tracking down a serial killer. Both have important roles in the public sphere, but they're entirely different animals.
If they really wanted to protect the public, they would be more proactive and keep sick people off of airplanes. However, that wouldn't be good for the airlines bottom line and the kickbacks politicos receive from lobbyists.
I like your solution, though I don't think your reason for it not being in force is so cut and dry as corporate greed. How would you prevent sick people from getting on planes? It may become very easy in the near future with body temperature-detecting devices that are as quick as X-ray scanning equipment, but I'm not sure if we have this stuff yet ready to go on a mass scale.
@ John from Daejon
before you rant, ask yourself if you know anything about how a virus or any pathogen works, when does a virus classified as deadly, and how the experts classifies potentials of one animal strain to become (mutating) a full blown human strain (changing hosts). The experts point of view about these things is different from yours (layman) and try to be more appreciative instead of blaming the system for their short comings
arvinsign,
If we all were to believe the "experts," how many of us would get out of bed in the mornings. There is always some new catastrophe coming down the pipeline to worry us more than what many already take anxiety drugs to deal with on a daily basis.
For the most part, life has never been better for the inhabitants of this orb. We live longer than ever and enjoy greater freedoms, and free time, than at any other time in the history of this ever evolving rock. However, everyone ends up dying in the long run, but we have experts trying their damndest to extend and defeat this fact of life. Already, extreme longevity is now creating numerous problems in our societies. Maybe the experts can get to work on those problems.
A large number of the 36,000 (to use John's figure--I'm not sure of his source)are elderly, young, and people with already-weakened immune systems. The danger of this strain is that it kills otherwise healthy people who are not in the usual high risk category. Many of those who have died in Mexico are people in their twenties and thirties.
Protective measures are a good thing, to be sure. How can they hurt, right?
One side effect of the protective measures (not of the influenza itself) is the fact that many Koreans have stopped eating pork. I personally believe that this is a result of the fact that the KCDC has increased their inspections of meat from North America (even though they admit that the meat is safe, but is intended just to make people feel better).
Joe in Korea wrote:
I personally believe that this is a result of the fact that the KCDC has increased their inspections of meat from North America (even though they admit that the meat is safe, but is intended just to make people feel better).
A quibble: They don't admit that the pork from the US and Mexico is "safe," only that "there's no possibility that the meat will give people human swine flu."
Factory farmed meat is not that safe. I started a post on that here.
kushibo,
With both of these meets in particular, it is vital to cook the meat thoroughly or risk salmonella in chicken or trichinosis with pork, not to mention risks of bacteria in both, which is why one shouldn't order pork roast medium rare and use the tongs they galbi restaurants provide instead of using chopsticks to handle the cooking pork at the table.
You and I both know that pork and poultry are not so safe, but the article does say,
``It's safe to eat pork as it's commonly heated above 71 degrees Celsius,'' a ministry official said."
The article says that even though you won't get the swine influenza from the meat, the KCDC is gong to toughen its inspections--something I find ironic. They did state that the purpose of the stricter inspections was "to settle public anxiety toward the swine influenza A (H1N1)," not to regulate the meat for possible MRSA contamination.
and yes, that should have bean meats, not meets.
@ John of Daejeon
I think Kushibo said it well with this statement and i agree:
"This is an essential problem of public health: you are called incompetent for your failures and chicken little for your successes."
you wrote:
If we all were to believe the "experts," how many of us would get out of bed in the mornings. There is always some new catastrophe coming down the pipeline to worry us more than what many already take anxiety drugs to deal with on a daily basis.
- Then who else you want to believe? Do you have solutions other than what the experts are postulating? Are you saying its better to let nature do its work on us rather than do something about it using scientific tools?
you said:
"However, everyone ends up dying in the long run, but we have experts trying their damndest to extend and defeat this fact of life. Already, extreme longevity is now creating numerous problems in our societies. Maybe the experts can get to work on those problems."
- Im sorry John, but i think your way of reasoning as well as rationalizing is quite pathetic and pointless.
What extreme longevity are you talking about thats causing problems? Please provide some facts
It amazes me how public the response to a foreign bug is, but when SARS threatened and South Korean farms developed their own strain, the government was more restrained. I think the restrictions on pork imports have more to do with trade pressure from lobbying groups, since the WTO allows restrictions for health.
Baltimoron wrote:
It amazes me how public the response to a foreign bug is, but when SARS threatened and South Korean farms developed their own strain, the government was more restrained. I think the restrictions on pork imports have more to do with trade pressure from lobbying groups, since the WTO allows restrictions for health.
Baltimoron, is it possible you're mixing up SARS and bird flu? There were no cases of SARS in Korea.
As for bird flu, Korea, like other countries, had this pathogen brought here. Birds, as you may be aware, can fly and are migratory. Since Korea is on the path of many migratory birds, bird flu infections in the locally raised bird population when they come in contact with migratory birds are a major risk.
And the reaction was hardly "restrained." When just one or two cases of bird flu were identified, hundreds of thousands or, in some cases, millions of birds were culled.
Those are Korean birds being destroyed, just to provide some balance with the South Korean public's general concerns about food safety, about which the K-blogs tend to focus on health concerns regarding imported meat, not domestic.
SARS is caused by birds, a connection global authorities are exploring in Mexico. Although SARS did not develop in the human population, and the infection spread, Korean farms developed a different strain, H1N2, indicating local incompetence as well. The news of bird culling was much more subdued than the relentless news updates and human interest stories on pigs and pork recipes I've watched tonight. I think Seoul is trying very hard to disassociate its pig farms from foreign ones lest citizens complain about the food supply chains as they did with beef.
"SARS is caused by birds"
- says who?source?? by bats possibly yes. But bats are mammals.
"Korean farms developed a different strain, H1N2"
Its an Influenza strain, not SARS. SARS is a Corona virus, while Influenza is an Orthomyxo virus, genomically, they are very different.
arvinsign,
It’s hard to take “experts’” opinions at face value when so much of their funding is dependent on these types of catastrophes and fear-mongering political shenanigans. Michael Crichton wrote a great book, “State of Fear,” exposing many of the ugly truths in the scientific community and encouraging the general population to think for themselves and not believe everything that scientists, politicians, leaders, and other people of authority spout from the rooftops as being gospel when they may have ulterior motives. Give it a read, it isn’t half bad. Even though it is a work of fiction, the science he used in the book has yet to be disproven, and he backs it up. I, for one, do believe in global warming, but it’s hard to take it seriously when many of us are doubting Thomases and have yet to see any islands overcome by the ocean with our own eyes. Anyway, it wasn’t that long ago that the world really had a problem with global warming, but we don’t seem to put the Earth’s age into perspective when talking about relatively minor current trends when judged against the backdrop of the history of the planet. If I were a scientist, I might try and get a couple of volcanoes to erupt as that helped cool down the planet in the past if things were to get really bad quickly.
As for old people, they are living longer than ever before and are not only going to become a drain on society as they live long, long past their productive economic years, but their end years may be spent in extreme loneliness and in a drugged out state in nursing homes and other places for the aged. Younger generations will be expected to shoulder the brunt of the expense of keeping the aged alive both monetarily and with their time. This could be a recipe for disaster as they come to resent these older people who have outlived their usefulness as scientists continue to probe for new ways to enable people to live longer and longer. It will become a cycle that wasn’t one centuries ago as our life spans were so much shorter and medicine was nonexistent as we know it today. Just think about the trouble China will soon have with too few children to support their elderly, as they will have as well with too few women versus men of a marrying age in a few years. Now, that might be a recipe for war in order to get rid of that excess male population.
@ John
I like Michael Crichton and i respect him as an author but not as a scientist (although he is a scientist). And i wont based my scientific opinions on the sole opinion of former scientist who diverted his career from science publication to fiction writing. there are other books and magz to base my opinion other than fiction and conspiracy theory books written by authors with a hidden agenda of making a hype and making a nice sale.
You are right about the ugly truths in the scientific community. But the question is how does it par compared to the real truth (that is out there) that science and scientists tried to established for hundreds of years already?
Regarding longevity..you seem to be a science fiction fan, if not, u are too exaggerated with your anticipations about the promises of science especially medical science. The direction of science right now is to save life but not prolong life. 99 pct of medical/biological science publications deals with either finding a cure, eradicating a disease, or biology/biochemistry of a pathogen and not a search for a fountain of physiological fountain of youth. Try to read real science, and you will see what i mean.
I conflated the two - avian flu and SARS. I also should have typed H5N2. But, on December 1, 2004, ducks were culled with the N2 variant of bird flu. The flow and mutation of this different strains are possibly due to agribusiness practices, which highlights the importance of preventative measures by public health authorities, as Brian here argued in a more recent post. I think it's incumbent on agribusinesses, ministries, and other related organizations to justify their positive role to society in the wake of these outbreaks, especially since these operations also consume resources like electricity and water at far greater rates than other sectors. It's interesting to note too, that these personal hygiene measures are the only positive steps the WHO and CDC have recommended. Seoul continues to implement the negative measures both organizations explicitly recommend against.
arvinsign,
You wrote: “99 pct of medical/biological science publications deals with either finding a cure, eradicating a disease, or biology/biochemistry of a pathogen.” I whole-heartedly agree, but the side effect is that people are living longer because of these advances, and while not a “fountain of youth” per se, it will become a “Methuselah” type of cure with more and more people living well past the age of 100 when the present social services net is strained as it is.
If it wasn’t for certain medical advances, and the scientists behind them, I doubt I’d be here typing this write now. I can’t thank those who made the medication I take on a daily basis enough. Most are people of utmost integrity; however, the term “evil scientist” didn’t manifest itself out of thin air as there are always the few who decide to push the bounds of what is right and wrong in their quests for money, influence, or notoriety. Sometimes, they have to do it just to keep the funding coming in. The world isn’t fair, and I think that maybe some of the great scientists that all of us know, and respect, may at one time or another been considered “evil” by many of their contemporaries (Galileo, Copernicus, Oppenheimer, etc.); however, the Third Reich, the Japanese Unit 731, and other governments around this orb were/are full of scientists who had/have no trouble testing their vile, despicable experiments on their fellow humans in their efforts to uncover the mysteries of life and how to extend it, or how to end it with the greatest number of casualties that they could inflict with the greatest amount of pain inflicted.
This video is a great introduction to the science of death that the Japanese used and many are unaware of (Unit 731): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bAp8bSdE5MQ
What really pisses me off is that many of these Japanese scientists were never brought to justice, and, instead, many became rich off their grotesque experiments after WW2 founding, or working in, pharmaceutical companies. Some were even brought to the U.S. to be used for their research into germ warfare that could help out American research in this area.
I’m sorry this has gotten a bit off topic of the flu. And, with the preceding link as evidence, I’m not some conspiracy theorist. Just someone who believes that history does repeat itself quite often. I’m just grateful that my life is actually quite good compared to so many who went through absolute living hells at the hands of a few evil scientists and madmen. I only wish that was "science-fiction."
This is great. Their are countries that are using elisakit in checking all passengers. This may help in knowing Swine flu infected victim.
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