June 11 (Bloomberg) -- Hong Kong will suspend classes at all primary schools, kindergartens and childcare centers for 14 days starting tomorrow after a confirmed cluster of swine flu cases, Chief Executive Donald Tsang said.

“The government is well prepared” and will monitor developments closely, he said in a televised press conference today. “There’s no need to panic,” he said.

Tsang said that 12 pupils at a secondary school were confirmed to have contracted H1N1 influenza. Classes at that school have also been halted for at least 14 days. Hong Kong confirmed its first locally contracted case in a 55-year-old man yesterday. The Lovells LLP employee had gone to a cocktail party organized by the international law firm that was attended by someone with swine flu.

Eleven of the new cases were classmates of a 16-year-old girl at the secondary school who tested positive for swine flu yesterday. Together with three more imported cases, they brought the number of human swine flu cases in the city to 63, according to a statement posted on the government’s Web site today.

Education Secretary Michael Suen said the government will decide on or before June 23 whether to continue the suspension of classes.

Playrooms Shuttered

Separately, the government also announced it will shutter children’s leisure and cultural facilities such as playrooms, the toy library and children’s multimedia room in the city’s Central Library, from tomorrow to June 25 to curb the spread of the flu.

It is also suspending sports, recreational and cultural activities organized for children during the period, it said in a statement. Hong Kong quarantined 351 people for seven days in a downtown hotel last month after the city’s first confirmed swine flu case.

Hong Kong has 1,623 kindergartens and primary schools with a total of 506,600 students, according to figures posted on the Education Bureau Web site. Lo Wing-lok, a member of a government advisory committee on emerging diseases, said that secondary schools should be monitored closely too.

“High school students have more freedom to go around public places and be in contact with potential infectious sources,” Lo said in an interview.

Secretary for Food and Health York Chow told reporters today that the government didn’t plan to close all secondary schools as their risk of infection is similar to that for adults.

Flu Clinics

The city’s Hospital Authority will open eight designated clinics for patients with flu-like symptoms on June 13. Chow said earlier the government will order 5 million doses of vaccine at an estimated cost of HK$700 million ($90 million) to prepare for a “more serious winter influenza.”

The World Health Organization today declared the first influenza pandemic since 1968. Margaret Chan, the WHO’s director-general, moved the alert to the top of the agency’s six-stage pandemic scale today on evidence the virus is spreading in communities outside the Americas.

The new H1N1 flu strain has taken root in Australia, Chile, the U.K. and Spain since its discovery in Mexico and the U.S. in April.

Seventy-four countries have reported 27,737 swine flu cases, with 141 fatalities, the WHO said yesterday. Mexico and the U.S. account for about three-quarters of confirmed infections worldwide. Only Canada, Chile, Australia and the U.K. have officially reported more than 500 cases.

The WHO estimates seasonal flu causes as many as 500,000 deaths a year.

To contact the reporter on this story: Theresa Tang in Hong Kong at ttang3@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: June 11, 2009 12:26 EDT