From AP-

Hong Kong quarantined hundreds of hotel guests and workers Friday after a tourist from Mexico tested positive for swine flu, Asia’s first confirmed case of the disease. With memories of 2003′s deadly SARS outbreak still fresh, the government moved quickly to track those exposed to the infected man and contain the potential spread of the disease.

Health workers wearing full body suits and masks wiped the tables, floor and windows in a room at the Metropark Hotel as guests in other rooms waved to photographers. It wasn’t immediately clear if the room being cleaned was where the patient stayed.

Later Friday, more than 20 guests wearing masks walked from the hotel to ambulances that took them away. S.K. Chuang, a consultant to Hong Kong’s Center for Health Protection, said the guests had shown respiratory symptoms and were taken to hospitals.

Police officers wearing gloves and masks guarded the Metropark Hotel and officials ordered a week long quarantine of the some 200 guests and 100 staff, all of whom were to be treated with the antiviral drug Tamiflu. The 25-year-old man who tested positive was isolated at a hospital and was in stable condition Friday.

My father was in the motel business when I was growing up. I wonder if guests will be billed for their involuntary stay. Also if the hotel had been The Peninsula* or say The Mandarin, would guests been quarantined there also?

Elsewhere a golf tournament in Mexico has been postponed, Chinese swimmers decided not to compete in a US event, and high school athletic events in Texas and Alabama have been put on hold. Close to my home, The Bishop of the Diocese of Palm Beach** has recommended to Pastor the sharing of the precious blood and the ritual of saying peace with a handshake be suspended because of flu fears.

There is this news too-

The swine flu outbreak that has alarmed the world for a week now appears less ominous, with the virus showing little staying power in the hardest-hit cities and scientists suggesting it lacks the genetic fortitude of past killer bugs. iPresident Barack Obama even voiced hope Friday that it may turn out to be no more harmful than the average seasonal flu.

In New York City, which has the most confirmed swine flu cases in the U.S. with 49, swine flu has not spread far beyond cases linked to one Catholic school. In Mexico, the epicenter of the outbreak, very few relatives of flu victims seem to have caught it.

I think this will be much ado about nothing. Just like the swine flu scare in the US of 30 years ago.  Use the comments section to voice your opinions.

*- In 1999 the wife and I visited Hong Kong and we got to stay at the Peninsula(long story) while there. Our room for the stay was upgraded, I’ve seen smaller houses than the suite we were given and my wife’s eyes were bulging. The person showing us to the room said to the wife, “Madam is the room satisfactory?”

**- My wife has been an employee of the Diocese of Palm Beach for 15 years.