Mexico would overcome its flu crisis, President Felipe Calderon said yesterday after officials cut the number of likely swine flu deaths to 84 but warned the disease could cost the economy more than $US70 billion ($A97 billion).
Mexico has ordered a halt to all non-essential business and federal government activities.
Mr Calderon said in a national television address that ''the good news is this illness is curable'' even though, ''unfortunately, we have lost human lives''. The country had a stock of one million doses of anti-viral medicine that it was using to treat infected patients.
The continued ''cooperation of Mexicans is necessary if we are to overcome this ordeal'', he said.
He urged citizens to stay at home during a five-day holiday weekend starting today. ''Stay at home with your family because there is no place as safe for protecting yourself against swine flu as your own home.'' His comments came after Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova said the number of probable flu deaths in the country had nearly halved to 84 after more stringent tests. However, Mr Cordova said the confirmed number of patients with the flu in Mexico had risen to 99, including eight who were confirmed to have died from the virus.
Finance Minister Agustin Carstens, at his side, said the impact of the flu on Mexico would batter the country's economy, which was already struggling.
''The effects could be between 0.3 and 0.5 per cent of GDP,'' he said. At the top range, that would equate to more than $A97 billion out of Mexico's $A2.1 trillion economy.
Authorities have closed all restaurants, bars, clubs and other public venues in the capital in a bid to stem the flu's spread. The measure is costing the city about $A138 million a day and threatening the jobs of 450,000 hospitality workers. Archeological sites, such as Aztec and Mayan ruins, have been barred to the public nationwide, and big football games are being played in stadia empty of spectators.
Tourists have been avoiding Mexico, either out of fear of the disease or because of increasing flight cancellations by governments and companies around the world.
Amid the human and economic carnage, Mexican officials are hunting for the source of the deadly flu.
The director of Mexico's National Epidemiological Centre, Miguel Angel Lezana, said a Bangladeshi man was among the dead. That case was being looked into, among other leads, in the search for the origin of the flu. AFP
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