Uribe's office announced Sunday that the Colombian leader appeared to have caught the A(H1N1) virus after attending a regional summit last week in Argentina, and other governments had been notified.

The president's personal physician Gustavo Aristizabal told local radio that Uribe would require two additional days of treatment, "but by Wednesday afternoon, he should be able to resume normal activity."

Uribe first began to feel ill at around midday on Friday, but his symptoms, including persistent cough and fever, already appeared to be subsiding, the physician said.

"Since Saturday, the president has ceased to have fever. He shows general signs of illness -- a sore throat, a little achiness in the chest -- but now he is on the road toward full recovery," Aristizabal said.

A doctor treating the president, Carlos Alvarez, said Uribe was prescribed the antiviral drug Tamiflu and that he "does not need hospitalization."

But he is being told to rest, something the fast-moving 57-year-old apparently does not do very often. Uribe has maintained a grueling schedule since coming to power in 2002, routinely starting his workday at 5:00 am and working late into the night.

The president has cancelled all public appearances for Monday and Tuesday, but while in isolation Uribe was continuing to carry out some his official duties by telephone and Internet, said spokesman Cesar Mauricio Velasquez.

The country's health minister Diego Palacio told reporters that he spoke with Uribe late Sunday and was monitoring progression of the illness.

"It's going quite well," said Palacio, who is also a medical doctor, adding that the president appeared "very animated" and that he did not fear any major health consequences from Uribe's brush with the dreaded virus.

Costa Rica's President Oscar Arias, a Nobel Peace Prize winner and mediator of the Honduran political crisis, also had a bout of swine flu earlier this month.

Meanwhile, other Colombian cabinet members who traveled to Argentina with Uribe, including Foreign Minister Jaime Bermudez and Defense Minister Gabriel Silva, have been tested to determine whether they have contracted the virus, officials said.

Bermudez is presently on official business in China, and Colombia's envoy to Beijing said Chinese authorities, out of an abundance of caution, had asked Bermudez to undergo a health screening to ensure he was not infected with swine flu, after news of Uribe's illness emerged.

"Out of diplomatic prudence, meetings that he had planned today (Monday) have been canceled until we get the test results," Ambassador Guillermo Ricardo Velez told RCN radio.

Velez added however that Bermudez is "in perfect health" and shows "no symptoms" of the virus.

A spokesman in Bogota said Uribe's office also informed representatives of other governments who attended the summit in Bariloche, Argentina about his illness.

"All the people and government leaders who have had close contact with the president are being informed," Velasquez said.

Deaths from swine flu in Latin America -- the worst-hit region in the world -- rose to over 1,300 this month.

To date, 34 people have died of the flu in Colombia, official data show. A total of 621 infections have been confirmed.

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