At least he was Mexican

The New York Times has an article by Sharon Otterman and Liz Robbins about the first one:

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 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 ten states, up from 66 cases in five 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 “These numbers are almost out of date by the time we state them,” Dr.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 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. Governor David Paterson noted that the three potential cases were in Orange, Cortland, and Suffolk Counties.
In the United States, there have, so far, 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 4 April 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 8 April, and on 13 April 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 CDC confirmed on Wednesday that the child was “in fact infected with the swine virus,” Dr. David 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. Spain said Wednesday that the number of confirmed cases of the flu had risen to ten, including one person who had not recently visited Mexico, according to Reuters. In addition, the health ministry said authorities were observing 59 suspected cases.
One public elementary school, on the North Side of Chicago, closed for the day because of a probable case, and the school officials in Chicago said they were conducting checks on attendance data from all of the city’s schools to determine whether other closures may be needed.
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.
Officials around the world seem to be girding themselves for the worst, as well. In France, the health minister took the extraordinary step of calling for a suspension of all flights from the European Union to Mexico. In London, Prime Minister Gordon Brown told Parliament that three more cases of swine flu had been confirmed in Britain, one of them a twelve-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 twelve-year-old in southwest England had been temporarily closed, he added. Canada has thirteen 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 fourteen 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, the Ukraine, and Ecuador— banned the importation of all pork products despite a declaration from the WHO 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.