The New York Times reports in a second story on how aggressive measures by the Chinese government appear to have helped to control the spread of H1N1 in the country: "To protests from around the world, China isolated entire planeloads of people entering the country if anyone on the plane exhibited flulike symptoms. Local authorities canceled school classes at the slightest hint of the disease and ordered students and teachers to stay home. China was virtually alone in taking such harsh measures, which continued throughout most of the summer," the newspaper writes. "Now, Chinese and foreign health officials say that some of those contested measures ” more easily adopted by an authoritarian state ” may have helped slow the spread of the disease in the world's most populous country. China has not had to cope with a crush of cases, and it began administering a vaccine for swine flu in early September, the first country to do so."

The article examines how the Chinese government responded to the H1N1 outbreak compared to the SARS outbreak, just a few years ago, and examines the number of H1N1-related deaths in the country (Wong, 11/11).

Meanwhile, the Serbian government on Wednesday declared H1N1 to be an epidemic, according to a statement by the country's health minister, Tomica Milosavljevic, Bloomberg reports. "Medical staff are being placed under alert and emergency vaccination of about 3 million people out of Serbia's population of 7.3 million will begin when vaccines arrive, according to the statement," the news service writes. "Declaring an epidemic will allow the government to order military and police to transport and stockpile food and use its personnel to secure functioning of public utilities if workers fall ill. The government may also use military and police barracks and hospitals in case of an increase in patients."

According to Serbian health authorities, there have been 258 confirmed cases of H1N1, including eight deaths. The article includes information about the Serbian government's plans for ordering H1N1 vaccines and the economic impact of the virus (Nenadovic, 11/11).

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