But the Auckland Regional Public Health Service says it has to take a stringent approach and treat such scenarios as potentially serious. The Air New Zealand flight carrying 274 passengers arrived at Auckland Airport from Tokyo at 9.25am on Monday.

The Boeing 777-200 plane was cordoned off and health officials were called in after 73 Japanese home-stay students out a group of 90 had shown flu-like symptoms. A spokesperson for the home-stay group says it appears there was an over-reaction. A Medical Officer of Health, Richard Hoskins, says health authorities may have overreacted to the situation but that is a far better response than under-reacting.

Dr Hoskins says health authorities have a duty to take any precaution necessary to protect New Zealanders from new diseases. He says all the students had already been immunised against seasonal influenza before leaving Japan. Some of them were found to have a common cold. "In hindsight, yes, you would classify this as an over-reaction but we had a large group of people travelling into the country that we were notified of in good time, and we needed to take it seriously until we knew that it wasn't a significant new illness for New Zealand." Dr Julia Peters, who headed the health service team, is defending the time it took to get on the plane.

Aerticle sourced from RADIO NZ - http://www.radionz.co.nz/news/national/98264/officials-concede-'over-reacted'-over-flu-scare