Philippine health authorities reported seven more patients positive of Influenza A/H1N1 on Thursday, bringing the total number of confirmed cases to 29 in the country.

One of the newly-confirmed cases is a 20 year-old male international graduate student of the De La Salle University, who is a contact of the first case confirmed at the school on Wednesday.

The other six cases are Filipinos who all have a history of travel to the United State, Health Secretary Francisco Duque told reporters.

Duque said that in all of the 29 confirmed cases, patients manifested only with mild symptoms reflecting the general trend and behavior of the virus in other affected countries.

"With further characterization of the virus in our local cases, if we see that A/H1N1 poses no severe threat and is self-limited in most cases, we may be seeing a shift in our control strategy to outpatient and home management of patients showing only mild symptoms," he said, adding that this is already being done in countries like Mexico and the United States which already have sustained community transmission.

Since May 1, 2009, the Philippine Department of Health has monitored a total of 414 Cases Under Observation. Besides the 29 positive cases, 47 have pending laboratory results, and 338 are negative for the A/H1N1 virus and have been discarded.

(Xinhua News Agency June 4, 2009)