Officials on Alert as Swine Flu Spreads

BETSY MCKAY DAVID LUHNOW JACOB GOLDSTEIN

The World Health Organization declared a deadly new strain of swine flu to be a "public health emergency of international concern," as health officials called the disease widespread and governments took precautions to screen for the virus.

New Zealand said that 10 students "likely" have swine flu after a school trip to Mexico, as governments across Asia began quarantining those with symptoms of the deadly virus and some issued travel warnings for Mexico. The Israeli Health Ministry also said there is one suspected case in the country.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed Sunday that at least eight children at a school in the New York City borough of Queens have been infected. Over the weekend, the CDC confirmed an additional infection in California, the state's seventh case. Two cases were confirmed in Kansas, and there have been two cases reported in Texas.

Swine Flu Strain Hits U.S. Cities

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The World Health Organization has stepped up operations after eight school kids in New York and two other people in Kansas tested positive for a strain of the swine flu.

French Health Ministry officials said four possible cases of swine flu are under investigation, including a family of three in the northern Nord region and a woman in the Paris region. The four recently returned from Mexico. Tests on two separate cases of suspected swine flu proved negative, they said.

Spain's Health Ministry said three people who just returned from Mexico were under observation in hospitals in the northern Basque region, in southeastern Albacete and the Mediterranean port city of Valencia.

At least 81 people in Mexico have died from severe pneumonia caused by the flu-like illness, according to the World Health Organization. WHO Director-General Margaret Chan warned that the virus had the potential to cause a pandemic, but cautioned that it was too early to tell whether it would erupt into a global outbreak.

On Sunday, Ms. Chan held teleconferences with staff and flu experts around the world but stopped short of recommending specific measures to halt the disease beyond urging governments to step up their surveillance of suspicious outbreaks.

Following an emergency meeting Saturday, a WHO panel declared the developments thus far a public health emergency and urged governments around the world to intensify surveillance for unusual outbreaks of flu-like illness and severe pneumonia. But the panel held off on raising a global pandemic alert, saying it needed more information before making a decision.

Governments world-wide stepped up surveillance for the deadly virus. Officials at Tokyo's Narita airport installed a device at the arrival gate for flights from Mexico to measure the temperatures of passengers. Hong Kong and Taiwan said visitors to infected areas who have fevers will be quarantined -- a precaution the Philippines is also considering. The Chinese territory also joined South Korea in warning against travel to Mexico. Indonesia has increased surveillance at all entry points for travelers with flu-like symptoms -- using devices at airports that were put in place years ago to monitor for severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, and bird flu. It said it was ready to quarantine suspected victims if necessary.

Associated Press

A quarantine officer monitored travelers with a thermographic device at an arrival gate at Narita International Airport in Japan.

Mexican health authorities are continuing to investigate whether more than 1,300 people were infected with the mysterious bug, which attacked in three geographically diverse areas of the country and is taking its heaviest toll in young adults.

The CDC said the number of U.S. cases is likely to rise.

"The public health community has a number of active investigations of suspect illness going on," Anne Schuchat, the CDC's interim deputy director for science and public health programs, said in a telephone press conference. "I expect us to find more throughout the country."

"It's clear this is widespread, and that is why we have let you know we do not think we can contain this virus," she said. "We're likely to find it in other places."

New York city health officials say that despite students testing positive for the swine flu virus at a Queens preparatory school, there appears to be no citywide spread of the illness, nor additional clusters.

CDC tests conducted confirmed cases of human swine flu among students at St. Francis Preparatory School in Queens. The school is suspending classes on Monday, the city reported. The affected students have experienced only mild symptoms and many are already improving, but a similar virus has recently caused deaths in Mexico, city health officials said.

The city's health department's surveillance system has not shown a citywide increase in flu-like illness. An investigation of a cluster of children with illness in a Bronx daycare facility has so far not identified any confirmed or probable cases, according to the health department.

The health department said the Queens investigation began last week, when more than 100 students at the St. Francis developed flu-like symptoms, including fever and sore throat. The Health Department's Public Health Laboratory tested nine nose and throat swabs. Eight of them tested positive for Influenza A but did match any of the known human variants of that virus (the H1 and H3 human subtypes) by available testing methods. On Saturday, the Health Department considered them "probable" cases of human swine influenza and sent the samples to the CDC in Atlanta for confirmatory testing. Those tests confirmed the presence of swine influenza viruses.

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