By-Tarek Amin, El-Sayed Abu Ali, Abdel Al Talaat, Saeed Nafea, Teresa Kamal and Ali el-Shawki
Only five days into the academic year, the Ministry of Health announced that two cases of H1N1, or swine flu, had been detected among high school students. The first was a 15-year-old student at the Rajac American School for Girls in Cairo; the second an 11-year-old student at the Naga Helal School in the southern province of Sohag.
Administrators at both schools have suspended classes for 15 days pending medical observation and analysis.
The announcement came only hours after Egypt's council of ministers had declared that schools and universities throughout the country would remain open as no new cases had yet been reported.
According to officials at the Sohag Fever Hospital, the first case may have contracted the disease from a relative returning from the Umrah (lesser pilgrimage) to Saudi Arabia.
Meanwhile, four more students suspected of having contracted swine flu were quarantined in the southern provinces of Menya and Beni Suef.
Council of Ministers spokesman Magdi Radi said that the first batch of imported vaccine would be distributed to pilgrims heading to Saudi Arabia. He went on to stress that a batch of some 80,000 doses would arrive in Egypt no later than 15 October.
In a related development, a recent study published in the British Medical Journal found that vaccines against seasonal influenza might also be helpful against swine flu.
