May 22 (Bloomberg) -- Swine flu spread to more people in Japan as the government moderated its response to the outbreak, and claimed another life in the U.S. in a scourge that’s reached 41 nations.

Japan’s swine flu taskforce eased policies on quarantine and flight inspections and downplayed the severity of the virus in new guidelines issued today that include ending mandatory on- board health checks of people on flights from the U.S., Canada and Mexico. Arizona added one death, taking the U.S. total to 10, according to data from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and the state’s Department of Health Services.

The government said today that Japan has almost 300 cases of the virus known as H1N1 since detecting its first infections two weeks ago. Virologist Hitoshi Oshitani said Japan, whose case total is the highest after the U.S., Mexico and Canada, could have diagnosed its first swine flu patients earlier if doctors had been looking closer for suspected cases in the community, not just in visitors from overseas.

“People did not have any time to look for cases in the community,” Oshitani, a professor at Tohoku University in Sendai, northern Japan, said in a phone interview yesterday. “That’s why we missed the cases in Japan.”

Tokyo’s government last night confirmed its third case of swine flu, a 36-year-old woman who returned from a trip to the U.S. on May 19, and Kyoto authorities reported the prefecture’s first infection yesterday.

Japan has reported no deaths from swine flu and had 283 cases as of yesterday, with the majority of infections in and around Osaka prefecture, 400 kilometers (250 miles) west of the capital.

School Closures

Doshisha University is among more than 4,000 schools that have been shut in Japan, where students form the majority of those infected. The university, which has about 25,000 students, said it’s closing its four campuses in Kyoto from today until May 27.

Japan follows New York in closing schools to cope with the outbreak. The city will shut six more school buildings starting today for up to five days, adding to 20 closures in Queens, one in Brooklyn and one in Lower Manhattan in the past week, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene said in a statement.

The relaxation of Japanese government guidelines came as the outbreak curbed travel and caused shops to lose customers as people stay home to avoid becoming infected.

Travel Cancellations

As many as 362,200 people canceled visits to Kyoto, Nara, Osaka and other western Japan destinations, costing the tourism industry about 4.3 billion yen ($46 million), the Japan Ryokan Association said yesterday. Seventy schools in the Tokyo area postponed trips to western Japan in the four days to May 20, said Kazuhiko Sekiguchi, a spokesman at JTB Corp., Japan’s largest travel agent.

Shops shut in Japan include all 175 boutiques and restaurants at the Santica underground shopping mall in central Kobe, western Hyogo prefecture. Sales have fallen by 50 percent, according to the mall’s general manager Kouji Kitamura.

The number of confirmed swine flu cases totaled 11,034 in 41 countries, according to the World Health Organization’s latest tally yesterday. The figure includes 85 deaths, translating to a fatality rate of less than 1 percent.

“This virus should be considered more like a seasonal flu than a more deadly disease such as avian flu or SARS,” Chief Cabinet Secretary Takeo Kawamura said at a briefing today, explaining the new guidelines. “People should remain cautious but calm.”

Higher Fatalities

An outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, killed at least 774, or almost 10 percent, of the more than 8,000 people infected globally from November 2002 to July 2003, according to WHO data.

H5N1 avian influenza killed almost two-thirds of its 424 victims over the past six years, compared with a fatality rate of less than 1 percent for swine flu.

The World Health Organization’s flu preparedness alert is at phase 5, signaling a pandemic is imminent, and it’s monitoring the spread of swine flu infections in Japan.

WHO Director-General Margaret Chan told a meeting of health ministers in Geneva yesterday that she would declare a pandemic if the new virus becomes “a global phenomenon.”

Australia closed a second school and reported its first human-to-human swine flu infection as the nation confirmed its 11th case today.

Taiwan confirmed its third case of the H1N1 virus in a 23- year-old Taiwanese woman who arrived from San Francisco yesterday.

To contact the reporter on this story: Stuart Biggs in Tokyo at sbiggs3@bloomberg.net; Eijiro Ueno in Tokyo at e.ueno@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: May 22, 2009 02:02 EDT