Flu-hit capital back in business

Mexico City's health secretary has announced that all businesses - including sports arenas, dance halls, cinemas and all restaurants - can start operating again.

Mexico City residents are beginning to return to work after swine flu outbreak Mexico City residents are beginning to return to work after swine flu outbreak

But Armando Ahued said businesses must screen for ill people and make surgical masks mandatory for employees and customers.

Mexico's government said the shutdown reduced the spread of the virus at its epicentre.

Deaths have slowed as the country mobilised an aggressive public health response to the epidemic that has sickened thousands in 24 countries.

Sweden and Poland were the latest countries to confirm swine flu cases, both in women who had recently visited the US.

In Mexico, the confirmed death toll reached 42 on Wednesday - mostly as backlogged cases were tested, but there were two new deaths on Tuesday. It also confirmed more than 1,100 nonfatal cases.

Some 80% of Mexico's swine flu infections have been in and around the capital, and a majority of the dead were between 20 and 39 years old.

There was some concern that Mexico was relaxing too quickly, especially with secondary schools and universities reopening, and primary schools reopening next week.

While "filter teams" prepared to screen out sick students and teachers, epidemiologists warn that the virus has spread throughout Mexico, and could bounce back.

"We have seen a tendency (of the outbreak) to diminish but not disappear," the nation's Health Secretary Jose Angel Cordova acknowledged.

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