CAIRO: The first Egyptian Swine flu patient has fully recovered on Thursday, a Ministry of Health official announced Friday. Test results conducted on the 12-year-old American-Egyptian girl, the first and only case of the H1N1 virus, known as swine flu, were negative, the Ministry said. The patient had been hospitalized since Monday when she was suspected of carrying the virus. The airport's thermal detectors had noted her high temperature. Egypt has been using these detectors at airports since the eruption of Swine flu last April. After being quarantined and testing positive, the girl was immediately given Tamiflu. The patient's mother, who was accompanying her on the visit to Egypt, as well as the other 145 passengers who were on board the same flight, have all tested negative, said the ministry official. On Tuesday in a press conference about the first Egyptian Swine flu case, Minister of Health Hatem El-Gabaly said, "Egypt is still free of H1N1 flu. The only case detected in Egypt was a traveler and not a local citizen. By press time 66 countries had reported 19,273 cases of H1N1 flu, which accounted for 117 deaths, according to the World Health Organization's (WHO) latest report. The number of deaths has not risen since last Wednesday. In the Middle East region only 57 people were diagnosed with the H1N1 virus, but no deaths have been reported. Saudi Arabia had announced its first case on Wednesday, following several cases in Lebanon. Bahrain reported one case in May and Kuwait,18. The very first case of the flu in the Middle East appeared in late April in Israel, where the total number of cases has reached 33 to date.
