Prayer against swine flu: Clergymen in Mexico City Sunday lead a street procession invoking the Señor de Salud (Lord of Health) for the first time since a 1961 smallpox epidemic. This time Mexicans are praying for an end to the swine flu outbreak.

Mario Guzmán | EFE

Costa Rica's health officials reported no cases of swine flu so far in this country in spite of a scare that three people were carrying the deadly virus here, according to Costa Rica media reports. The scare follows reports of outbreaks in the United States, Mexico and Canada.

Doctors found the three patients who visited hospitals Friday here – one from Mexico and a married couple from Alajuela, northwest of San José –were not suffering from swine flu, the daily La Nación reported Sunday.

The newswire EFE reported Sunday afternoon as many as 22 people in Mexico (by press time) died this weekend from swine flu and 60 more deaths in 19 of Mexico's 32 states were possibly caused by flu, according to the World Health Organization (WHO),.

The U.S. government declared a public health emergency after 20 mild cases of the virus – in California, Kansas, Ohio, Texas and New York – were detected. The cases led to no fatalities and only one brief hospitalization, according to the WHO. Canadian officials also reported six mild cases of infection, in the provinces of Nova Scotia and British Columbia.

The World Bank is loaning Mexico more than $200 million to help it deal with its outbreak, the Associated Press reported Sunday afternoon.

Swine flu is a respiratory disease caused by type A influenza that regularly causes outbreaks among pigs but does not normally infect humans. Reports of these recent outbreaks in humans have cited effects including flu-like symptoms such as fever, dizziness and vomiting.

Costa Rican health officials told the daily La Nación that hospitals and clinics here are prepared with prevention equipment to stop the spread of the flu in the advent that an outbreak appears.

The WHO has not recommended travel or trade restrictions.

Health Minister María Luisa Avila said Costa Rica so far has not stopped flights from Mexico,the U.S. and Canada, locations where outbreaks have occured, La Nación reported Sunday.

The health minister did not return several phone calls from The Tico Times.

For more facts on swine flu, see the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Web site at http://www.cdc.gov/swineflu/general_info.htm.

The U.S. television network NBC has announced the cast for its reality show “I'm a Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here!” and while Rod Blagojevich, former governor of the U.S. state of Illinois, will not be coming to Costa Rica, he was still playing a part.

The impeached Democrat had been seeking a role on the show, which will premiere June 1, until a judge last week barred him from leaving the country due to bond restrictions imposed following federal corruption charges. Blagojevich, however, will still participate in promotion for the reality show.

According to a news release from NBC, cast members for the show will include Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt of MTV's “The Hills,” former NBA basketball player turned TV personality John Salley, model Janice Dickinson, former contestant of the “reality” song contest “American Idol” Sanjaya Malakar, actor Stephen Baldwin and professional wrestler Torrie Wilson.

Additional contestants and the show's hosts will be announced soon, said NBC, which is partnering with MTV for casting, production and programming for the show.

Billed as “the ultimate Swiss Family Robinson” by NBC, the show will follow 10 contestants who are dropped into the jungle and forced to rely on survival skills. Contestants will have to undergo a series of challenges and tasks, and viewers will decide which celebrities get booted off each episode. The final winner will be crowned “King or Queen of the Jungle” and will take home a cash prize for his or her favorite charity.

Although the network has not confirmed exactly where and when the show will be filmed in Costa Rica, all signs point to the northern Caribbean slope region of Sarapiquí.

A small corner of Escazú, west of San José, was alive on Saturday with the shoe-tapping songs of the Beatles, the smell of deep fried fish and chips and the sight of dozens of British flags flapping in the Costa Rica breeze.

A day of national pride for the British and people of British Commonwealth, the Queen's 83rd birthday was celebrated in Costa Rica with hundreds of people in attendance.

Last year, the event raised more than $22,000 to help Costa Rican schools in need, and with a higher turn out this year, event organizers are hoping to raise even more.

“We have people from all the different nationalities represented in San José here and everyone seems to have a good time,” said British Ambassador Tom Kennedy. “It's basically a big family day.”

Asked what his favorite part of this year's event was, Kennedy said the theme: The Swinging Sixties.

“It was a theme that everyone had fun with,” said Kennedy, who didn't sport any sixties garb, but was surrounded by people in bell-bottoms, wigs, large glasses and flowing shirts. “From kids right through to grannies, everyone can dress up with beads or hippie gear. So that theme really worked.”

Leading cement maker Cemex has shut five plants and laid off some 50 employees in Costa Rica, citing a drop in demand by as much as 30 percent from last year.

The plants were located in the northwestern Guanacaste province and were set up as temporary “mobile” operations to produce concrete for construction projects in the area, Carlos González, the company's director, told The Tico Times via e-mail.

Much construction along Guanacaste's touristy coast has been drying up, causing related companies to buckle across the board.

Construction in the tourism sector in the first quarter dropped 60 percent from the same period in 2008, the newswire DPA reported, a direct result of the global economic crisis, which has driven down the amount of U.S.-backed investment for such projects.

Cemex's mobile plants are “set up and taken down based on the needs of the clients, so it's normal that when the (construction) project ends, they close. The difference this year is that new projects haven't begun in the short term that would allow the opening of new plants,” González said.

However, he added, no further closures are planned.