A day after an elementary school in Dongguan, Guangdong Province, was closed for seven days after 30 of its students fell victim to the A/H1N1 flu, the Ministry of Education on Monday urged students across China to "avoid unnecessary parties and travel during the upcoming summer vacation".

In a statement on its official website, the ministry also advised students to "stay away from crowds and people who show any symptoms of the flu".

Schools that are planning to hold international academic events during the vacations should stay alert for the pandemic and be prepared for any emergency, the statement said.

Thirty students -- all younger than 12 -- of the central primary school in the Shipai township were confirmed infected with the H1N1 influenza late last week, following which the school was ordered shut down for a period of seven days starting on Monday.

Six students developed symptoms of the flu last Wednesday and 24 others took ill on Thursday and Friday, according to local health authorities.

The infected children are in stable condition since their illness was mild, authorities said.

Nurses at the Shilong Hospital, where 12 of the students are being treated, were quoted as saying by local media that most of the children are 7 to 8 years old and are accompanied by one of their parents in the quarantined wards.

An expert group has been sent to Dongguan to help with the medical treatment, placate patients' families and trace the source of the flu.

Some 60 people who had close contacts with the children are under medical observation in hotels or their own houses.

The students had not left Dongguan for at least 10 days before they caught the flu, prior to which the city reported no cases of the flu, officials said.

Huang Fei, deputy director of the Guangdong provincial health bureau, said the virus was "limited to the school, not an outbreak in the city", and asked residents not to panic.

The H1N1 flu is preventable, controllable, and treatable, experts said, adding people should avoid crowded places and pay more attention to personal hygiene.

Meanwhile, all kindergarten, elementary and middle schools in Beijing yesterday started checking all students' body temperature at the school gates.

According to the Beijing municipal commission of education, the move is aimed at preventing and controlling the H1N1 flu from spreading further.

"We want to raise the level of prevention," an official with the commission, who refused to be named, said yesterday.

There were serpentine queues at the gates of the capital's schools, as students waited to be checked for any symptoms. Some schools even checked the body temperatures of parents dropping off their wards.

The Ministry of Health said 27 more cases of the flu were confirmed on the mainland yesterday, taking the total number to 441.

Among the new cases, 11 were from the Guangdong Province.

The country's first batch of H1N1 flu vaccines started being produced at a pharmaceutical firm on Monday.

The vaccines are expected to hit the market in September after undergoing safety tests, said Hualan Biological Engineering Inc, which is manufacturing the vaccines.

The company received the seed virus from a World Health Organization (WHO) lab on June 4.

(China Daily June 23, 2009)