By SHARON OTTERMAN and LIZ ROBBINS
Published: April 29, 2009
A Mexican toddler who came to the United States with his family to visit relatives in Texas has died in Houston of the swine flu, Texas officials said Wednesday, even as the number of confirmed cases continued to rise in the United States and Europe without additional reports of fatalities.
President Obama on Wednesday recommended that schools in the United States with confirmed or suspected cases of the disease “strongly consider temporarily closing.”
“This is obviously a serious situation, serious enough to take the utmost precautions,” Mr. Obama said.
Dr. Richard E. Besser, the acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in a news conference Wednesday that there were now 91 confirmed cases in 10 states, up from 66 cases in 5 states that were confirmed on Tuesday. More than half of the cases — 51 — were in New York, with 16 in Texas and 14 in California. Other states reporting cases were Massachusetts, Michigan, Arizona, Nevada, Indiana, Kansas and Ohio.
“These numbers are almost out of date by the time we state them,” Dr. Besser said.
Indeed, an hour later the health commissioner in New York, Dr. Richard F. Daines, said in a news conference that state health officials have confirmed three possible new cases in addition to the 51 recorded by the centers. Gov. David A. Paterson noted that the three potential cases were in Orange, Cortland and Suffolk Counties.
So far in the United States, there have only been five reported hospitalizations, Dr. Besser said, including that of the Mexican 22-month-old boy who died.
The youth had traveled with his family on April 4 on a flight from Mexico City to Matamoros, Mexico, and then crossed the border to Brownsville in south Texas, according to the Texas Department of State Health Services. He developed a fever on April 8, and on April 13 was admitted to the hospital in Brownsville. The next day he was transferred to Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, where he died on Monday.
The C.D.C. confirmed on Wednesday that the child was “in fact infected with the swine virus,” Dr. David E. Persse, director of emergency medical services in Houston, said in a nationally televised news conference.
That said, Dr. Persse and other officials in Houston tried to calm fears of an outbreak, noting that no other members of the boy’s family had shown symptoms of the virus. And Kathy Barton, a spokeswoman for the Houston Department of Health and Human Services, emphasized that the boy had not posed “any additional risks to the community” after his hospitalization more than two weeks ago.
As health officials in the Houston area examined samples of 250 people who had flu-like symptoms, national and international authorities said they were working to confirm additional cases and act to contain the virus from spreading.
In France, the health minister took the extraordinary step of calling for a suspension of all flights from the European Union to Mexico, the epicenter of the outbreak, even as a Mexican health official said that the death toll appeared to be stabilizing. More than 150 people are suspected to have died from the virus in Mexico, and at least 2,400 people are suspected to have been infected.
Mr. Obama, in his most extensive remarks to date on the spread of the swine flu, which he referred to as the H1N1 virus, spoke a day after asking Congress to provide $1.5 billion in emergency funds to fight the disease, and his comments appeared to reflect a deepening sense of the risk the still ill-understood flu might pose.
By urging parents to make contingency plans in the event of school closings — simply placing children in crowded day-care centers was “not a good solution,” he noted — Mr. Obama indicated that his administration was contemplating the possibility, at least, of a serious increase in the flu’s prevalence.
Kathleen Sebelius, at her first news conference since being sworn in on Tuesday as President Obama’s secretary of health and human services, echoed the President’s concern.
“Unfortunately, we’re likely to see additional deaths from this outbreak,” Ms. Sebelius said Wednesday.
France’s request to suspend all flights from the European Union to Mexico will be made at a meeting of European Union health ministers, scheduled for Thursday in Luxembourg, French Health Minister Roselyne Bachelot said. The World Health Organization has argued against such travel bans, contending that they are an ineffective way to stop to spread of the disease.
Cuba and Argentina have both banned flights to Mexico, while Americans have been advised only to “avoid all nonessential travel to Mexico.”
Mexico City, one of the world’s largest cities, has taken drastic preventative steps, shutting down schools, gyms, swimming pools, restaurants, and movie theaters. Many people on the streets have donned masks in hopes of protection.
Mexico’s health secretary, Jose Cordova said late Tuesday that emergency measures to curb the disease’s spread there appeared to be working and that the death toll was “more or less stable.” The confirmed number of deaths held at 7, the health ministry said, although 159 deaths were attributed to flu-related causes. Germany confirmed three cases of the disease and Austria had one confirmed, as four European nations have now reported cases. Germany’s disease control agency, the Robert Koch-Institut, said the three include a 22-year-old woman hospitalized in Hamburg; a man in his late 30s being treated at a hospital in Regensburg, north of Munich, and a 37-year-old woman from another southern town.
Health and airport authorities in Munich said the first direct flight carrying vacationers back to Germany since the outbreak of the disease in Mexico was expected and might be quarantined if passengers showed symptoms of swine flu.
Austria’s health ministry said a 28-year-old woman who recently returned from a month-long trip to Guatemala via Mexico City and Miami has the virus but is recovering, according to The Associated Press.
Spain said Wednesday that the number of confirmed cases of the flu had risen to 10, including one person who had not recently visited Mexico, according to Reuters. In addition, the health ministry said authorities were observing 59 suspected cases.
In London, Prime Minister Gordon Brown told Parliament that three more cases of swine flu had been confirmed in Britain, one of them a 12-year-old girl, in addition to a Scottish couple, bringing the total to five. All three had recently travelled from Mexico, had mild symptoms and were responding to treatment, he said. A school attended by the 12-year-old in southwest England had been temporarily closed, he added.
Canada has 13 confirmed cases, all of which are mild, Canada’s chief public health officer, Dr. David Butler-Jones, said Tuesday.
New Zealand officials said on Wednesday that 14 cases had been confirmed there. New Zealand has been screening all arriving air passengers, and Dr. Fran McGrath, the deputy director of public health, said that five foreign travelers were being treated under quarantine for mild cases of the flu. All five were being “kept in isolation” at an undisclosed location in Auckland.
Also on Wednesday, at least 10 countries — including China, Russia, Ukraine and Ecuador — banned the importation of all pork products despite a declaration from the W.H.O. that “there is no risk of infection from this virus from consumption of well-cooked pork and pork products.”
Egypt went even further, ordering the culling of all pigs in the Arab country as a precaution against swine flu, the country’s health minister said. While most Egyptians are Muslim and do not eat pork, it is available, and is mostly consumed by the Christian minority and foreigners.
“It is decided to slaughter all swine herds present in Egypt, starting from today,” Health Minister Hatem el-Gabali said in a statement published by state news agency MENA.
Numerous countries in Europe, Asia and Latin America have been screening arriving passengers, including thermal facial scans and on-board checks of air travelers. Several countries have set up diagnostic and quarantine facilities for travelers suspected of being ill.
Five cruise lines, including the world’s two largest, Carnival and Royal Caribbean, said they were immediately stopping all port calls in Mexico. Princess Cruises, Holland America and Norwegian Cruise Line also said they were suspending Mexican stopovers. Cruises to Mexico accounted for about 7 percent of cruise traffic worldwide in 2008, according to the Cruise Line Industry Association.
Reporting was contributed by Sewell Chan, Donald G. McNeil Jr., Anahad O’Connor and Anne Barnard from New York; James C. McKinley Jr. from Houston; Nicholas Confessore from Albany; David Stout and Brian Knowlton from Washington; Marc Lacey from La Gloria, Mexico; Alan Cowell from London; Ian Austen from Ottawa; and Keith Bradsher from Hong Kong; and Victor Homola from Berlin.
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