MADRID - SPAIN'S Health Ministry has reported a huge jump in the number of H1N1 flu cases in the country, which have risen more than 70 per cent to 291 in a week.

Spain updates its total swine flu cases only once a week, on Fridays.

Last Friday the number was 167, although over the course of the week the government has given numbers on outbreaks at three Madrid-area schools.

There, the cases now total 66.

The World Health Organisation named Spain this week as being among countries where the disease was spreading rapidly from person to person.

A Health Ministry official denied on Friday's new number was a cause for alarm, saying all the cases are mild and no one is hospitalised. -- AP