(AGI) - Quito, 14 Aug. – The H1N1 flu pandemic is not bowing down to anyone: after hitting Costa Rican Nobel prizewinning president, Oscar Arias Sanchez, it has now hit another South American leader: Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa. The news was announced by the Health minister in Quito, Marcelo Aguilar, according to whom Correa has been put under “observation” by doctors. He is thought to have contracted the virus having worked alongside a colleague of Aguilar, Ricardo Patino who is head of the Linea Programmatica, as well as the head of his own security staff and one of his bodyguards, all three of whom have caught the H1N1 flu virus. “Anyone who has been in contact with flu sufferers is under observation for any possibility that it should become symptomatic,” explained Aguilar, “and this also goes for the president.” Correa, who has just begun his second 4-year mandate, has not been put in quarantine (unlike Arias Sanchez) and is said to be making a full recovery and is in good spirits. The H1N1 virus has killed 19 people in Ecuador whilst the number of cases has now hit 900 out of the country’s 14 million inhabitants.