HONG KONG — Hong Kong lifted a week-long quarantine Friday of an upscale hotel where Asia’s first swine-flu case was traced, allowing 280 guests and workers to end an isolation that was criticized as overkill by some but a medical necessity by authorities.
Towing suitcases and beaming, some guests of the Metropark Hotel found it hard to contain their delight as they poured from the glass double doors to waiting buses.
Asia has been largely spared the virus that continues to kill people in worst-hit Mexico, which announced its 45th death and 159 more cases Friday even as it emerged from a national shutdown that closed schools and businesses.
The swine-flu virus has now spread to 30 countries, killed at least 47 people and sickened more than 3,100 worldwide.
In other developments:
• Japan reported its first three cases this morning, an airport quarantine official said. Australia’s health minister also confirmed that country’s first case, saying the woman contracted the flu in the U.S.
• President Barack Obama sought to reassure La tinos that swine flu won’t lead to an epidemic of discrimination in the United States just because Mexico has been the epicenter of the outbreak.
At a town-hall-style meeting at the White House, Obama told about 130 Latino public-health professionals and neighborhood volunteers that the nation’s plan to fight the flu will not exclude their communities.
