14:42, 05 May 2009 | GMT +5
Mexico, China in quarantine row
BEIJING. May 5. KAZINFORM. Mexican officials angry about China?s decision to quarantine more than 70 Mexicans over swine flu fears sent a plane yesterday to the communist country to bring its citizens back home. China sent its own plane to retrieve Chinese nationals stranded in Mexico; Kazinform refers to Arab News.

Mexican President Felipe Calderon complained of a backlash against Mexicans abroad, and sent the chartered plane to fly to several cities and pick up Mexicans who wanted to leave China. In one case, the Mexican ambassador said, a family with three small children were woken up in their hotel beds before dawn and taken to a hospital.
Late yesterday, China sent a chartered flight to Mexico City to pick up 200 stranded Chinese nationals, the official Xinhua News Agency reported. China had earlier canceled the only direct flight between China and Mexico, a twice-weekly service by Aeromexico.
China?s Foreign Ministry denied Mexicans were singled out. ?This is purely a question of health inspection and quarantine,? ministry spokesman Ma Zhaoxu said in a statement.
China had quarantined 71 Mexicans at hospitals and hotels, Mexico?s Foreign Secretary Patricia Espinoza said. None of the travelers in isolation has swine flu symptoms. In Hong Kong, 350 people remained isolated in a hotel after a Mexican traveler there was determined to have swine flu. As the number of confirmed human cases of swine flu rose to 1,025 in 20 countries, the World Health Organization urged governments to refrain from taking rash but unproven measures to contain the disease; Kazinform cites Arab News. See www.arabnews.com for full version.