LVIV, Ukraine — Russia and Slovakia tightened their borders with Ukraine on Tuesday as the World Health Organization began investigating a suspected swine flu outbreak.
The death toll from flu has climbed to 71 since the outbreak struck last week in the western city of Ternopil, Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko said. But blood tests have yet to determine how many of these deaths were from the new and aggressive H1N1 strain.
As a precaution, schools and universities across the country will remain closed this week, and officials urged people in western Ukraine to travel only when necessary and stay away from public places.
Slovakia, which lies on Ukraine’s western border, closed two of its five border crossings with Ukraine to keep the infection from spreading. In Russia, where there have been 14 confirmed swine flu deaths, the Health Ministry said it would examine anyone crossing the border from Ukraine and quarantine people with severe symptoms.
The World Health Organization, which sent a team to Kiev on Monday to assist local health officials with the epidemic, said the precautions taken so far were reasonable considering the potential threat.
"By closing schools and canceling mass gatherings in the early stages of an event … you can slow down the transmission of the virus," WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl said by phone from the organization’s headquarters in Geneva. "So far there is only one confirmed death (from H1N1 in Ukraine), but there is a big event going on there."
In the western city of Lviv, the government has urged cafes, cinemas and theaters to close indefinitely, and roughly a third of the people in the streets on Tuesday wore surgical masks to avoid inhaling the virus, as did the Ukrainian guards on the border with Belarus.
But the emergency ward of the central hospital in Lviv saw no shortage of available beds, even as patients trickled in complaining of flu symptoms on Tuesday. All of those accepted for treatment were quarantined.
Compared to last year, the total number of flu deaths in Ukraine has actually dropped by 10 percent, the UNIAN news agency quoted Deputy Health Minister Vasily Lazorishinets as saying.
This led some Ukrainian officials and medical experts to accuse the government of exaggerating the outbreak for political gain ahead of presidential elections to be held in January.
In January, Tymoshenko and Yushchenko will face off for the presidency. That election could overturn the 2004 Orange Revolution that swept a pro-Western government to power in Ukraine for the first time. Leading in the polls is Viktor Yanukovich, who was beaten in 2005 by Yushchenko, but has pulled ahead on a platform that emphasizes closer ties with Russia.
