By Omar Sinan
The Associated Press
CAIRO — A foreign students’ dormitory for the American University in Cairo has been put under 24 quarantine Monday after two U.S. students were diagnosed with swine flu, health and university officials said.
The two cases were discovered Sunday night and they have been hospitalized, said Rehab Saad from the university’s public relations.
The two students, a male from New Jersey and a female from Florida, arrived from the U.S. seven days earlier for a summer program at the university, said Abdel Rahman Shahine of the Health Ministry. There are now three confirmed cases in the country.
Every year hundreds of foreign students take classes at AUC, which has a 5,500 person student body, 81 percent of whom are Egyptian.
Police cordoned off the dorm building and sealed off part of the road leading to it, leaving 162 students of 10 different nationalities locked up inside to be tested.
Dozens of pizza boxes were allowed to enter the building, which is located in Zamalek, an upper class neighborhood of Cairo, home to many foreigners and embassies.
The university itself recently relocated to the desert outskirts of the capital.
Police in white uniform outside the building refused to speak to the Associated Press.
AUC issued a statement saying that classes will be suspended until Sunday while the graduation ceremony scheduled June 16 and 18 will be held as planned.
Egypt announced its first confirmed swine flu case June 2 after an Egyptian-American girl arriving in the country tested positive.
Egypt’s government has come under criticism for its decision to slaughter the nation’s 300,000 pigs in response to the swine flu problem.
The move has elicited widespread criticism from international animal rights groups and was described as unnecessary by the World Health Organization.