School officials at a high school in Central China will be "severely punished" for an outbreak of the H1N1 flu after failing to check the temperatures of students before the fall term began.

One hundred and nine students at the No. 3 Senior High School in Xin'an county in Henan province have been infected and classes have been suspended since last Thursday when the first H1N1 flu patient from the school was reported, the Xinhua News Agency said yesterday.

An initial investigation revealed that school officials did not check the students' temperatures, as is required at all schools in the province, said Jiang Duyun, director of the province's education department.

The checks were to be done before the first classes of the fall term. To complicate matters, the school reportedly had started the fall semester ahead of schedule.

Zhou Yong, information office director of Henan provincial health bureau, told China Daily yesterday that the flu outbreak at the school is under control as most of the 81 confirmed cases and 83 suspected cases were expected to be discharged soon from the hospital.

"All these students and teachers have been quarantined and are in rapid recovery at the county hospital. There have been no severe or fatal cases," Zhou said.

"The flu outbreak is under control, and patients are expected to be discharged from the hospital soon because the temperature of most students have been back to normal."

The high school has 2,768 students. All the other students and teachers have been under home quarantine and doctors have recorded their temperatures every day since the outbreak, he said.

Experts and doctors have also launched an investigation to find the source of the infection but have not had any results yet, he said.

The H1N1 flu also struck a civil aviation college in Southwest China's Sichuan province yesterday with seven students confirmed with the virus.

About 1,100 students at the Sichuan Southwest College of Civil Aviation moved to a different campus and started classes in Qingyang District, Chengdu on Sunday after nearly a month of military training in Qionglai, said the health department in Chengdu.

The first patient developed symptoms on Aug 28 and another six fell ill between Sunday and Wednesday. They were aged between 16 and 20, the bureau said. The conditions of the seven patients were not available. All students who have had close contact with the patients have been put under medical observation.

Another outbreak of H1N1 flu was reported Sunday at a middle school in northwest China's Gansu province where 26 students were confirmed ill.

The Ministry of Health has called on the public to take every possible precaution against H1N1 flu as risks are rising amid recent cases of group infection.

In another development, the vaccine for the H1N1 flu produced by Chinese pharmaceutical company Henan-based Hualan Biological Engineering Inc passed an expert evaluation organized by the State Food and Drug Administration (SFDA) on Tuesday.

Hualan's flu vaccine could safely be given to people aged above three in a single 15 microgram dose, and was approved by the unanimous vote of 41 experts after they studied the recent adverse drug reactions of the vaccine.

The experts will submit a report to the SFDA that will make the final decision in three days. If the SFDA greenlights Hualan's vaccine, the company will get its production license for the drug this week.

It made Hualan the second Chinese company to gain approval from the SFDA expert team for the H1N1 flu vaccine.

On Monday, experts approved flu vaccines produced by Beijing-based Sinovac Biotech Ltd. Sinovac's vaccines were only approved to be administered to people between the ages of three and 60.

As of Monday, 3,981 cases of H1N1 flu cases were reported in China, among which 3,391 have been cured and none has been fatal, according to the Ministry of Health's latest statistics.

Source:China Daily