Saudi Health Minister said on Wednesday that nine people out of more than 500,000 thousand people arriving for the annual haj pilgrimage have been diagnosed with H1N1 swine flu. There has been increasing concern about the possibility of a major outbreak occurring during haj, when more than three million Muslims arrive in the holy cities of Mecca and Medina, Saudi Arabia, in mid November.
Minister Rabeeah said “The situation from the point of view of health, we are very happy. Out of the 600,000 arriving so far, we have only seen nine suspected cases of A(H1N1), and only two of those are in the hospital.” He said so far this year, 7 people have died from the swine flu. According to the World Health Organization, there have been over 6,000 deaths from A(H1N1) flu worldwide as of November 1 2009.
