25 hotels in and around the popular coastal resort of Cancun was forced to close. --PHOTO: REUTERS
CANCUN - CANCELLATIONS from tourists giving up travel plans to Mexico over swine flu fears, have forced 25 hotels in and around the popular coastal resort of Cancun to close, local officials said.
The affected hotels in Cancun, Playa del Carmen and Cozumel accounted for some 12,000 rooms, Quitana Roo state governor Felix Gonzalez told local radio on Monday.
In Cancun itself, nine out of 144 hotels were closed, according to tourism officials.
Cancun's hotel occupancy has fallen to 20 per cent in the third week of alert for the influenza A(H1N1) epidemic, said the president of the local hotel association.
The A(H1N1) flu virus, which has spread worldwide, has killed 56 people in Mexico, the epicentre of the epidemic.
Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova has said the number of recorded cases is dropping off after a peak on April 26, but 2,059 infections have now appeared in 29 of the country's 32 states.
A report by the World Health Organisation (WHO) Rapid Pandemic Assessment Collaboration, which includes the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) scientists, estimated that 23,000 people had been infected by the virus in Mexico, where the WHO first reported the influenza outbreak late last month.
The report is set to be published on Thursday in the journal 'Science' but was made available online ahead of its publication.
The flu's impact was expected to cost Mexico's economy around US$2.3 billion (S$3.4 billion), around 0.3 per cent of gross domestic product, the finance ministry said last week.
On Tuesday, the WHO reported that the number of cases worldwide had gone past 5,000, recording 5,251 people confirmed as infected. -- AFP
