KUCHING: The state Health Department has managed to track down almost all the 26 passengers on board JetStar 3K529 flight used by the state’s second confirmed Influenza A (H1N1) patient.

Datuk Patinggi Tan Sri Dr George Chan

“I think we have managed to detect almost all the 26 passengers,” Deputy Chief Minister Datuk Patinggi Tan Sri Dr George Chan told reporters at a leading hotel here yesterday.

He said that Sarawak still registered two A (H1N1) patients with no new admittance to Sarawak General Hospital (SGH) at press time.

Dr Chan was at the hotel to attend a dialogue session between the heads of Mission and Honorary Consuls of Malaysia, led by Foreign Affairs Minister Datuk Anifah Aman and Chief Minister Pehin Sri Abdul Taib Mahmud.

Meanwhile, Taib said that any mechanism put in place to keep the virus at bay, could not be 100 per cent effective because Sarawak was part of a ‘global world’.

“However, the fact that Sarawak has so few cases so far shows that the preventive measures that the state have taken are quite effective given that it only recorded two cases.”

For this, he credited Dr Chan, who is also State Disaster Relief Committee chairman, and his team for their quick action to put in place the preventive measures.

The state’s first A (H1N1) patient is a 23-year-old local male university student on June 22 after he came back from Melbourne, Australia for a break, and the other a 26-year-old Australian woman who arrived in the state from Darwin, Australia, and was tested positive for the virus on June 24.

Both patients are said to be in stable condition at SGH.