Australia's first case of Influenza A/H1N1 was confirmed, Health Minister Nicola Roxon said on Saturday.
She said the woman who arrived in Brisbane on Thursday on flight QF16 from Los Angeles was no longer infectious and had a weak strain of the virus.
Roxon told reporters in Canberra that the woman, who identified herself to a nurse at Brisbane Airport, contracted the disease in late April while overseas and had recovered before returning to Australia.
She said results from the World Health Organisation (WHO) laboratory in Melbourne came back positive at 1:00 a.m. local time on Saturday.
"The strain of the flu has been identified in the sample but at a very low count," Roxon said.
"This is clearly a serious development but we are in a situation where the best medical advice seems to indicate that this person wouldn't be infectious. This is a situation that we have constantly been advising the public was inevitable," the health minister added.
Queensland's chief health officer Dr Jeannette Young said woman from New South Wales had tested "weak positive" to the human Influenza A/H1N1.
The woman began experiencing symptoms while in the United States on April 27 and arrived in Brisbane on flight QF16 on May 7.
(Xinhua News Agency May 9, 2009)
