BACOLOD CITY— The University of Negros Occidental-Recoletos (UNO-R) suspended classes at all levels Friday afternoon after 168 students showed flu-like symptoms.

Carlos Legaspi, UNO-R director of student affairs, said most of the number of the flu-like cases were in high school.

The alarming number of flu-like cases and the rapid increase prompted school authorities to send students home Friday afternoon and to suspend classes until July 9 as a precautionary measure, he said.

The school premises will be disinfected while the students are away, he said.

But he stressed there were no confirmed Influenza A(H1N1) cases at UNO-R, which has 6,500 enrollees from preschool to college.

Last Monday, 135 students of St. John’s Institute in Bacolod City also developed flu, prompting school authorities to suspend all classes on Tuesday.

Health authorities said most of the affected SJI students have recovered.

The 1,410 SJI students are expected to return to school Monday.

Classes at the Science Elementary School in Bais City in Negros Oriental have also been suspended since Tuesday after several of its students reportedly exhibited symptoms of the A(H1N1) virus.

This is the first school which suspended its classes in Negros Oriental because of possible A(H1N1) infection.

Bais City Mayor Hector Villanueva ordered the suspension of classes and directed a cleanup of the entire building.

Dr. Socrates Villamor, head of the DOH (Department of Health) in Negros Oriental, said the DOH was able to gather five random swab samples from the children and sent them to the government-run Vicente Sotto Memorial Medical Center in Cebu City for testing.

If the symptoms are present, the swab samples would be sent to the Research Institute for Tropical Medicine, the only institution that can confirm if the virus is indeed the A(H1N1) virus.

“This will take a long time because until now, we are still awaiting the results of the samples we had sent them two weeks ago,” Villamor said. The RITM is swamped with requests for testing from all over the country.

Villanueva, meanwhile, said he has ordered an investigation to determine if school officials were negligent in handling the viral spread.

“I have been informed that some of the children had been reporting for school even though they had been sick for several days,” Villanueva said.

Villanueva said he would file administrative cases against those responsible in case it was proven that they were negligent.

Villanueva said that only the Grade 3 pupils of the Bais City Science Elementary School were spared from exhibiting flu-like symptoms. The other grade levels had one or two cases each.

Dumaguete City had one confirmed case of A(H1N1) but the patient already recovered two weeks ago, Villamor said.