US swine flu cases leap to 44 as Obama urges calm

 

 

President Barack Obama appealed for calm Monday (April 27) as officials confirmed 44 mild cases of deadly swine flu across the US and warned against tourist travel to neighbouring Mexico.

 

Obama called the outbreak a "cause for concern," but said it shouldn't provoke alarm.

 

"The Department of Health and Human Services has declared a Public Health Emergency as a precautionary tool to ensure that we have the resources we need at our disposal to respond quickly and effectively," Obama said.

 

Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano, warning against "non-essential" trips to Mexico, said US immigration officers would start to screen visitors arriving from infected areas.

 

"Travellers who do present with symptoms, if and when encountered, will be isolated," she said.

 

Health officials in California boosted again the number of US swine flu infections when it confirmed four new cases, three of which involved people in the southern part of the state bordering Mexico.

 

Napolitano said that regardless of what the World Health Organization decides, "we are proceeding as if we are preparatory to a full pandemic" by executing a plan readied to combat any outbreaks of avian flu or SARS.

 

"We don't know that a pandemic actually will occur, but because we want to make sure that we have equipment where it needs to be, people where they need to be, and, most important, information shared at all levels, we've already organized as if this were," she said.

 

So far the only swine flu deaths have been recorded in Mexico, where the probable toll rose Monday to 149, with 20 people confirmed to have died from the disease.

 

The US has recorded the second highest rate of infection, and officials more than doubled the number of confirmed US cases to 44 in five states - New York, Ohio, Kansas, Texas and California.

 

Acting Centres for Disease Control and Prevention director Richard Besser said the numbers had leapt because there were 20 more confirmed cases at a school in New York whose pupils had recently visited Mexico.

 

Of the all cases "we are only aware of one individual who was hospitalized, and all people who have been infected and were sick have recovered," Besser told reporters earlier Monday, adding that those affected ranged from seven to 54 years old.

 

The rapid spread of swine flu around the world, and the deadliness with which it has struck in Mexico, prompted US officials Sunday to declare a national health emergency.

 

But the CDC official rejected a warning from European Union Health Commissioner Androulla Vassiliou that appeared to call on Europeans to avoid travel to the US and Mexico, calling it "quite premature."

 

New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said a total of 28 cases of swine flu had been confirmed at the school in the borough of Queens.

 

But he said fears the disease had spread to a second site proved unfounded when tests on six sick people all came back negative.

 

Meanwhile a school on the outskirts of Sacramento in northern California was closed Monday after a student tested positive for swine flu.

 

Health officials said the student hadn't travelled to Mexico, but another pupil had been in the country during the Easter break.

 

Besser said that beyond afflicted US citizens who have visited Mexico, there is only one documented case of a secondary infection of swine flu in the US

 

But the CDC chief warned: "This virus is acting like a flu virus, and flu viruses spread from person to person."

 

The CDC has released 25 percent of a federal stockpile of antiviral drugs, distributing 11 million courses of medication to US states.

 

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the Obama administration was monitoring the outbreak's potential impact on the recession-hit US economy.

 

"The world won't come to a standstill, but already the market is digesting swine flu stories with a forlorn perspective that a global pandemic is inevitable," Briefing.com analyst Patrick O' Hare said as Wall Street dipped.