Swine flu cases rise to 20 in Australia

School children returning from swine flu-affected countries in the Americas and Asia
will be quarantined, with 20 cases now confirmed across the country.
Thirteen cases are in Victoria, where three schools have been closed and two others
have sent children home.

In South Australia, where a mother and daughter have been diagnosed, two schools
have been closed.
Victoria, South Australia, NSW, Western Australia, Queensland and the ACT have
announced all school children returning from the United States, Canada, Mexico,
Panama and Japan should be kept out of school for seven days.
Federal Health Minister Nicola Roxon defended the move.
"We have had a very cooperative response from the travelling public to date and from
parents," she told reporters.
"I know that this will cause an inconvenience to many people but we do believe it is
one of the most effective ways of trying to reduce the spread of this disease."
Victoria's two latest cases are a teacher's aide from Thornbury High School and a
17-year-old boy from Mill Park Secondary College, both in Melbourne.
Both schools have been shut down for a week, following last week's closure of
Clifton Hill Primary School.
Also in Melbourne, some students of the Australian International Academy in Coburg
and St Monica's College in Epping were sent home after classmates tested positive.
While no victim has been admitted to hospital, Mohamed Sanad, an infected
eight-year-old student of the International Academy, said he had feared for his
life.
"I thought I was going to die. I was boiling on the inside," he told his father
Waseam Sanad at the height of his illness last week.
Mr Sanad, his wife, and their four young children have been quarantined in their
Altona North home in Melbourne's west since Friday.
The family had no idea Mohamed had the H1N1 virus until health authorities informed
them he had tested positive.
After his health improved, Mohamed went back to school on Friday, not knowing at
that stage he had swine flu.
"If we knew that he had anything at all (like) the swine flu, we obviously wouldn't
have taken him to school at all," Mr Sanad told AAP on Monday.
"It was only because he started recovering, he was fine, and we thought it was just
the normal flu at that stage."
The family had not travelled overseas recently.
Australia's chief medical officer Jim Bishop said keeping at-risk students away from
school was better than closing down whole institutions.
"What we are trying to do at this stage is to ... see if we can actually pinpoint
who might be bringing it into the school and therefore get them just to stay at home
for a few days," he said.
"That way we can stop it spreading in school, and that's much better than closing a
school of 500."
Eynesbury Senior College and Blackfriars Priory School in South Australia have been
closed.
A 40-year-old mother and her 15-year-old daughter - who attends Eynesbury - have
been confirmed as having swine flu.
The woman's 12-year-old son - who attends Blackfriars - is being considered as
"clinically positive" after his test results proved inconclusive, but he is not
being included in the official statistics.
Players and staff from the Fremantle Dockers AFL club were on the same flight from
Melbourne to Perth as a West Australian man who was diagnosed as the state's first
case of the swine flu.
The 30-year-old father of eight is believed to have caught the disease after
returning from a trip to Canada, via New Zealand and Melbourne.
No one from the team has reported feeling ill.
Two cases have now emerged in Queensland, with Queensland Health advising passengers
who arrived on a Qantas flight in Brisbane from Los Angeles on Saturday to isolate
themselves.
There are also two cases of swine flu in NSW.