Around five hundred Provincial Armed Constabulary (PAC) jawans were 'quarantined' after 17 jawans tested positive for swine flu in Uttar Pradesh's Meerut town, about 450 kilometres from here even as the number of deaths from the H1N1 flu virus in the town reached 12.

According to sources, the officials have banned as many as 472 PAC jawans of the sixth battalion from going out of the campus for the next 14 days.

''The risk of spread of the flu virus increase manifold inside the barracks as over a dozen jawans live in a single room,'' said a senior health official.

The decision was taken after 17 PAC jawans tested positive for swine flu. Officials in Meerut said that so far 78 cases of swine flu were reported from different parts of the town.

Sources said that of the 16 people, who had returned to the town from China in the past few days, as many as ten were under observation.

Incidentally, according to the official sources here the total number of cases of swine flu reported from across the state barring Meerut was only 25.

Health officials said that they were keeping a close watch on the situation and the hospitals had been supplied with adequate stocks of medicines and other equipment to deal with the situation.

A three-member team of experts sent by the state government to the town to take stock of the situation arrived in the town on Saturday and met the district officials and visited different hospitals, sources said.