Most of the Polish dailies devote their front coverage today to the announcement that the first case of swine flu has been registered in Poland, Polskie Radio reported.
“Should we be afraid of the swine flu?” muses Gazeta Wyborcza, publishing the basic information about the A-H1N1 flu strain, including its symptoms and possible vaccinations.
The coverage in Rzeczpospolita includes a report called “Life in Mexico begins to go back to normal” from the daily’s correspondent there, as well as an interview with professor Jacek Wysocki, the chairman of the Polish Vaccination Society who says that there is no need to panic as the new virus is not as dangerous as the bird flu virus from a few years ago while its symptoms can be compared with those of a regular seasonal flu.
Dziennik publishes an interview with Health Minister Ewa Kopacz who ensures that the national sanitary services are prepared to combat the virus. “We knew the appearance of the first case of swine flu in Poland was only a matter of days” claims Minister Kopacz.
The daily also reports on the anxiety among the personnel of LOT Polish Airlines following the confirmation that one of the passengers on a transatlantic flight was diagnosed with swine flu. “Plague in Poland” is the alarming headline from the tabloid Fakt, which publishes photographs of the sons and husband of the woman entering the hospital ward where she is currently quarantined. “The hospital looks like a fortress” writes the tabloid.
“Five stadiums in Poland and five in Ukraine” writes Gazeta Wyborcza predicting what next week’s announcement of the host cities for UEFA EURO 2012 to be chosen by the UEFA Executive Committee on 12 and 13 May will look like. According to unofficial information obtained by the paper’s journalists, the Polish cities to host the games of the tournament will be Warsaw, Gdansk, Wroclaw, Poznan and Krakow.
The Ukrainian cities of Kiv, Donetsk, Lviv, Odessa and Dnepropetrovsk will hold games as well. The southern Polish city of Chorzow and the Ukrainian city of Kharkov are out of the running – speculates the daily.
"The Pole who saved my face” is the headline from the story in Super Express tabloid about Maria Siemionow, a Polish surgeon behind the first successful US facial transplant. The patient, Connie Culp, was shot five years ago by her husband and the blast left a hole where the middle of her face had been. Five months ago, she received a new face from an unidentified cadaver. Professor Siemionow led a team of internationally-renowned surgeons in successfully transplanting the woman’s face. The story in Super Express is accompanied by photographs showing the progress of successive surgeries undergone by the patient.
