The number of confirmed cases of A (H1N1) rose to 48 late yesterday from 39 in the afternoon, Parliamentary Secretary Mario Galea said today.

Eight of the new cases were in Gozo and one in Malta. (Five were men resident in Gharb aged between 15 and 46. The others were a 17-year-old boy from Victoria, a 14-year-old boy from San Lawrenz, a 47-year-old Australian woman who had been in Marsalforn, and a 19-year-old man from Rabat, Malta).

Mr Galea told a press conference that it was evident that this was community transmission.

He said that in line with the guidelines of the World Health Organisation, Malta would now move from containment to mitigation. Patients showing symptoms would be administered anti-virals if they were in vulnerable groups and swabbing would take place randomly.

The WHO has reported that healthy adults are not considered vulnerable and the majority of people recover without tamiflu.

The most vulnerable are children under five years, pregnant women and people with chronic illnesses such as heart, respiratory and kidney problems.These people will be swabbed and given tamiflu.

Mr Galea insisted that people who feel unwell should stay at home and not go to work, saying one of the patients had been infected while at work.

He complained that there had been two cases where confirmed patients went to hospital themselves to collect the prescribed Tamiflu medicine.

The Parliamentary Secretary said the government stock of Tamiflu covered a quarter of the population and would grow to 35 percent by September. This apart from private stocks of Tamiflu of between 10-12 percent. An order for Tamiflu powder has been placed for syrup medicine for children.