Mexico Limits Public Services as Flu Alerts Are Increased Eduardo Verdugo/Associated Press People awaited care at a Mexico City hospital Wednesday. A Mexican child was the first death from swine flu in the United States. By DENISE GRADY and ALAN COWELL Published: April 30, 2009 As the swine flu virus appeared in new locations as far apart as Peru and Switzerland on Thursday, Mexicans braced for a national shutdown of offices, restaurants, schools and even the stands of soccer stadiums in an attempt to slow the spread of the disease. In nationally televised speech Wednesday night, Mexican President Felipe Calderón said that, as of Friday, many public services would be closed through Tuesday, encompassing a long holiday weekend. Most government offices and many private businesses will be ordered closed, restaurants, schools and museums will remain shuttered, and spectators will be barred from all professional soccer matches. Churches are expected to be nearly empty on Sunday. Officials in Asia and Europe also scrambled to confront the sickness, but Hong Kong’s chief executive, Donald Tsang, said t hat “pandemic flu will continue to spread and Hong Kong is very likely to be affected.” Senior European health officials prepared for emergency talks Thursday in Luxembourg to mold their own response, and governments in Asia stepped up preparations for a potential pandemic. World health officials are very concerned about the potential for large numbers of fatalities globally from the mutated virus, to which most people will have limited or no immunity, even though the epidemic so far has resulted in mild illness in many of those infected, and claimed only a confirmed eight lives in Mexico and one in the United States. Roughly 170 deaths are suspected of having been caused by the virus in Mexico. In Hong Kong, where health checks are being conducted on passengers arriving at the city’s airport, janitors put up fresh sheets of plastic film over elevator buttons so that any sick people pressing the buttons would not share their germs with too many people who pressed the same buttons later. In China, the official Xinhua news agency reported that Vice Premier Li Keqiang had toured the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention in Beijing on Wednesday and had called for manufacturers to produce more face masks, sterilization chemicals and flu medicines. Mr. Li said that China still did not have any confirmed cases of swine flu, according to Xinhua. The measures came after the W.H.O. raised its alert level on swine flu to Phase 5 on Wednesday, based on the flu’s continuing spread in the United States and Mexico. Phase 5, the next-to-highest level in the worldwide warning system W.H.O. alert system, has never been declared since the system was introduced in 2005 in response to the avian influenza crisis. Phase 6 means a pandemic is under way. Worldwide, at least 13 countries have confirmed cases of swine flu. Switzerland became the fifth European country to report a case of the disease in a 19-year-old student, and the Netherlands soon after became the sixth, reporting a case of the virus in a three year-old who had recently returned from Mexico. In South America, Peru reported its first case, according to news reports. “All countries should immediately activate their pandemic preparedness plans,” Dr. Margaret Chan, the W.H.O. director general, said at a late-night news conference in Geneva on Wednesday. While she emphasized the need for calm, at times she spoke as if a pandemic had already begun, saying, for instance, “W.H.O. will be tracking the pandemic.”