NAGOYA (Kyodo) Nineteen new cases of swine flu were confirmed Sunday and Monday, bringing the country's tally of patients with the new H1N1 virus to 613, officials said.
By prefecture, six of the patients were in Fukuoka, four in Chiba, two each in Tokyo and Aichi, and one each in Nagano, Saitama, Osaka, Kyoto and Hiroshima, the officials said.
In Fukuoka Prefecture, all six new cases are in the city of Fukuoka. The patients include 5-year-old and 2-year-old brothers and a 28-year-old female part-time worker, all in Hakata Ward. A 15-year-old girl who came from Australia to Fukuoka via the city's international airport also came down with the flu.
In Chiba Prefecture, two 14-year-old girls from Kashiwa and a 13-year-old boy from Narashino have been confirmed as being infected with swine flu. A 43-year-old woman was later confirmed to have the flu.
Meanwhile, a female U.S. resident in her 30s and a student, 18, at a woman's college have contracted the virus in Aichi Prefecture.
One of the two patients in Tokyo is a 25-year-old man in Toshima Ward who returned from Hawaii on Wednesday suffering a high fever and other flu symptoms. His condition is stable and he has been recovering at home since Sunday, according to officials.
A 29-year-old woman from Suita, Osaka Prefecture, has also been confirmed as having H1N1, and she has been hospitalized. The patient in Kyoto is a 12-year-old boy who recently returned from the United States to Kameoka in western Kyoto.
In Hiroshima, a man in his 20s living in Fukuyama was also confirmed as a swine flu patient.
