Japanese subject to stringent Flu screening at Thai Airports

Also included on the alert list is anyone flying either directly from Japan or in transit from a Japanese airport, said ministry spokesman Suphan Srithamma.

He said the ministry would soon decide whether to include Japan on a country-based watch list that now consists of the US, the UK, Spain and Canada, along with Mexico, where the disease originated.

This follows reports that non-travellers in Japan have contracted the type-A (H1N1) influenza virus.

In Thailand, eight people suspected of catching the virus are under ministry care after two French nationals were removed from the alert list after lab results showed they had seasonal flu.

John Lipsky, first deputy managing director of the International Monetary Fund, yesterday said the global spread of type A (H1N1) could have "notable effects" on the world economy.

The risks from the new type of flu "are hard to predict, as it is unknown, as well as its spread and its mortality".

"Hopefully, the impact will turn out to be quite modest and contained. But in the wake of the avian-flu threat a few years ago, very extensive contingency plans were put in place regarding, for example, operations of the financial sector," he said.

As for the global economic downturn, it is "far from over", he said in a speech in Bangkok, adding that many Asian nations had room to cut interest rates further to spur a recovery in their economies.

The WHO's annual assembly opened in Geneva, Switzerland, yesterday under pressure to declare the new flu a pandemic as the number of cases in Japan soared and a New York teacher died from the virus.

Japan shuttered more than 2,000 schools and kindergartens after it confirmed swine-flu cases had reached 129, with authorities warning the real number of infections from the type-A (H1N1) virus could already be in the hundreds.

Officials within the UN organisation said 8,829 people had been infected with the new virus so far.

That figure is rising rapidly, increasing the likelihood the WHO will raise its pandemic alert to the maximum level of six.

It is already at level five, indicating a pandemic is imminent.