Costa Rican Health Minister Maria Luisa Avila said on Monday that the country has confirmed 13 new cases of the A/H1N1 flu, bringing the total to 50.

Avila said that eight other possible cases are being analyzed.

Avila said that the number of confirmed cases is large, but lower to other Latin American countries like Chile, Panama and Argentina.

Avila said that the new cases are stable, even the 28-year-old patient who was hospitalized.

That patient had asthma, "for that reason he was hospitalized and he needed artificial breathing assistance, but he is out of risk now. The plate we took him was horrible, completely white, which meant a severe pneumonia," Avila said.

Costa Rican authorities have analyzed more than 1,600 possible cases, from them 90 percent have been discarded.

Costa Rica was the fourth country in the world reporting a death due to this deadly virus.

(Xinhua News Agency June 2, 2009)