A 22-YEAR-OLD flight attendant with the Singapore Airlines has become the first cabin crew member to come down with the Influenza A (H1N1) virus here. She was on the same flight as three other confirmed cases in Singapore who flew here from New York via Frankfurt earlier this week on SQ25.

Two other foreign passengers, who were on the same flight but left for Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday, have also been diagnosed with the virus in Malaysia.

The SQ25 flight from New York to Frankfurt brought in three cases here on Monday - a 30-year-old Australian man, a 33-year-old Singaporean woman, and an 18-year-old American woman.

The SIA stewardess stayed on in Frankfurt for a day and returned to Singapore on Tuesday morning. She took a taxi home. The next day, she developed symptoms but saw a general practitioner only a day later. She was taken to the Communicable Disease Centre and tests confirmed she had the virus.

The stewardess, who had been in New York since May 24, was one of two new cases in Singapore yesterday.

The other was a Singaporean man who developed flu symptoms in the early hours of Wednesday while still in Melbourne. He had been there since May 27.

When the 23-year-old flew back to Singapore on Thursday afternoon on SIA Flight SQ238, his fever was detected by the thermal scanners at the airport and he was sent to hospital.

He is the second person here to have returned from Melbourne with the flu. He was seated in row 40. Passengers seated between rows 38 and 42 should contact the MOH on 1800-333-9999. The ministry is also advising anyone who was on Flight SQ25 to monitor his health closely until next Monday.

An SIA spokesman said the infected stewardess had been taken off its roster after returning to Singapore. All other crew members who were on the same flight have been grounded for seven days.

For other flights carrying passengers with the virus, crew members serving in the same area as the patients were also grounded.

LEOW SIWAN