Orleans Mayor Nagin released from flu quarantine

Nagin's office said the couple and a security guard were quarantined Sunday as a precaution and were exhibiting no swine flu symptoms.

 

Nagin's spokeswoman Ceeon Quiett said the three are "being treated with utmost courtesy by Chinese officials," The Times-Picayune newspaper reported Monday.

Nagin "is feeling well and continues to be in communication with his staff," according to Quiett. She did not know how long they would be quarantined.

China has been enforcing quarantines and temperature checks at airports throughout the country to prevent the virus from spreading.

The World Health Organization said it has spread to 69 countries and infected nearly 22,000 people. Most of the cases have been mild, although 126 people have died as a result of the disease.

Quiett said a passenger on Nagin's flight to China had "signs and symptoms of an influenza-like illness suspected to be of the H1N1 subtype." People sitting near that passenger on the flight from Newark, New Jersey, were quarantined. There was no word on what flight it was or how many people were aboard.

Quiett said Nagin and his wife have not been tested for swine flu.

Three other city employees on the trip were not sitting close enough to the passenger to be quarantined, Quiett said.

Nagin was scheduled to travel next to Australia to speak at a conference on climate change and the global recession at the University of Sydney, but the status of those plans remained unclear Monday morning.

New Orleans' departing recovery director, Ed Blakely, was a professor at the university and among the conference's scheduled speakers. A spokeswoman for the university's United States Studies Centre has said Blakely is being made an "honorary" professor in urban policy at the center.

Nagin's schedule initially had him in Shanghai until Tuesday and then in Australia from Wednesday until Sunday. The mayor and his party were due to return to New Orleans June 15.