The Department of Health on Wednesday said it is monitoring 10 people in the country for possible H1N1 illness after they exhibited flu-like symptoms in the past weeks.
Health Secretary Francisco Duque said the 10 cases include seven males and three females with ages ranging from 9-80. Four out of the 10 cases are Filipino, he said.
The 10 include two people from the United States, two from the Republic of Korea, two from Italy, one from Switzerland, one from Ireland, one from the United Kingdom and one from Canada.
Duque said five of the cases are under observation including a 32-year old male Filipino from Ireland, a 26-year-old female foreigner from the United Kingdom, two 12-year-old and nine-year-old males from the Republic of Korea and a 29-year-old male Filipino from the United States.
The first two cases are under observation at the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center in Cebu City, the two from Korea are at Research Institute of Tropical Medicine in Manila while the last case is confined at San Lazaro Hospital in Manila.
The health secretary earlier said influenza test results of a Filipino male and a female Caucasian, who have been quarantined in a hospital in Cebu City, will be known later Wednesday.
Duque said influenza tests results are usually out in 24 or 48 hours. However, he said he had asked the RITM to try to come up with the result earlier.
The health secretary explained that if the swab samples turn out positive for influenza A, the RITM will conduct further tests and check on the H and N components.
"After that, the RITM will check if the samples are positive for H3N2. If they're positive for H3N2, we will immediately discharge them. If the results are negative, we wouldn't immediately know if they are positive for H1N1," Duque explained.
He said the swab samples will have to be brought to a collaborating laboratory either in Japan, Korea or Australia. He said the results from the foreign laboratories will be known by the Department of Health after four days.
Duque added that the two patients, who are still under quarantine at the Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center, will be immediately "managed" by the hospital staff and given dozes of Oseltamivir or Tamiflu and supportive treatment.
He said hospital staff have been reminded of the influenza protocol, which means wearing N95 masks while inside the medical facility with "case under observation" for influenza A(H1N1) virus.
Discharged
The health secretary said that aside from the Filipino and the Caucasian, three other people were quarantined at the Cebu City hospital. He said the three have already been discharged.
Among the three was the wife of the Filipino. The couple arrived from Hong Kong at 11 a.m. Tuesday. They were originally from Ireland and had stopped over in Hong Kong, which both have cases of influenza A (H1N1).
The thermal scanner at the Mactan-Cebu International Airport terminal detected that the Filipino male had fever, which was later confirmed by quarantine personnel after they took his temperature orally.
"The patient has manifestations of flu, and with a history of travel, so suspect na siya," the quarantine officer said.
Aside from him, a 26-year-old female Caucasian tourist, who arrived over a week ago, volunteered to be checked for the influenza A(H1N1) virus as she was coughing and felt weak.
She was brought to an isolation room in the same hospital. The female tourist, accompanied by her husband, had originally come from Mexico.
If the laboratory tests confirm these are swine flu cases, the Philippines would be the third in East Asia breached by the virus. Hong Kong and South Korea each have one laboratory-confirmed swine flu case but with no deaths.