The Indonesian Health Ministry on Tuesday confirmed 58 new A/H1N1 cases, bringing the total cases to 619 in the country, the ministry said in a statement.
Director General of Disease Control and Environmental Health of the ministry Dr. Tjandra Yoga Aditama said that two of the newly infected persons were foreigners and the rest were Indonesian citizens. Four of them had traveled to Malaysia, Australia, Dubai and Singapore, the director said.
"The cumulative of the swine flu cases in Indonesia now reached to 619, with 344 males and 275 females," he said in the statement.
The new cases were from the provinces of Bali, Banten, Jakarta,East Java, West Kalimantan, South Kalimantan, Central Kalimantan, Lampung, Riau and West Nusa Tenggara, according to the ministry.
So far, the A/H1N1 virus has been found in more than a half of the 33 provinces in the archipelago country with over 17,500 islands.
The virus has killed one person in Indonesia and has spread among humans.
The World Health Organization reported that over 800 people out of 134,503 infected persons have died relating to the virus in the world.
Indonesia's health authorities have ordered to impose a hygienic life as an effort to prevent the spread of the disease.
As Indonesia has been hit, the hardest by avian influenza virus H5N1, the presence of the avian influenza sub type A/H1N1 virus has created fears that both viruses could conduct a multiple combine that could create a new type of virus with the speed of spread similar to the A/H1N1 and the severity of attack equal to the H5N1 virus.
Indonesia has been on alert on the H1N1 virus since the severity of the threat from the virus on the third level. The World Health Organization has recently raised the alert level from five to six.
(Xinhua News Agency August 4, 2009)
