hyderabad with swineflu

Mexico prepares for swine flu shutdown Thursday, April 30, 2009 Mexico City has banned restaurants and cafes from serving all food except takeaways in a bid to help prevent the spread of the deadly swine flu virus. Schools across Mexico have closed, public gatherings are restricted and archaeological sites placed off-limits. The country's health minister says 159 people are believed to have died from swine flu, but the confirmed death toll has been reduced from 20 to seven. The number of cases globally is rising, though no-one outside Mexico has died. The UN has called on countries to check their contingency plans for a possible global epidemic, or pandemic. The UN's World Health Organization (WHO) assistant director general, Dr Keiji Fukuda, said a pandemic was "a very serious possibility, but it is still too early to say that this is inevitable". As officials in Mexico City announced the latest measures to stop the virus spreading, the city's chamber of trade estimated restrictions in the city were costing businesses there at least 777 million pesos ($57m or £39m) a day. US cases confirmed Mexico's Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova has said that although the number of suspected fatalities has risen slightly, the situation is "more or less stable". He said that more rigorous testing meant that the confirmed death toll from swine flu had been reduced from 20 to seven. There are a suspected 2,498 cases of swine flu, and 1,311 remain in hospital. After Mexico - where the outbreak started - the US has the highest number of confirmed swine flu cases with 64. President Barack Obama has asked Congress for an additional $1.5bn (£1bn) to bolster the US response. In California, where there have been 11 cases, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger has declared a state of emergency as a precautionary measure but stressed there was "no need for alarm". In another development, the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation is sending a team to investigate claims that indus