Scope of Swine Flu Outbreak in Mexico Might Be Smaller Than Thought
May 2 -- SATURDAY, May 2 (HealthDay News) -- The scope of the swine flu outbreak in Mexico might not be as great as once thought, test results released Friday in Mexico show.
The New York Times reported that only 397 of 908 suspected cases that were tested turned out to actually be the H1N1 virus. Sixteen of those people have died.
Mexico had reported about 2,500 suspected cases as of Friday, but the real numbers could be half of that if further testing follows the same pattern, the Times reported.
"Apparently the rate of infection is not as widespread as we might have thought," Jose Angel Cordova, Mexico's health minister, told the newspaper. The materials needed for the test were provided to Mexico by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
CDC officials declined to say what the new numbers might mean, the Times reported.
"We are continuously assessing new information, but it is still too early to draw conclusions about the extent of the spread of this new virus in Mexico or the severity of disease caused by it," Dr. Nancy Cox, chief of the influenza section, told the Times via an e-mail.
Meanwhile, the number of confirmed swine flu cases in the United States has now reached 141 in 19 states, federal health officials reported Friday.
"That's up eight states since yesterday," Dr. Anne Schuchat, interim deputy director for the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's science and public health program, said during a teleconference on Friday. "More and more communities are being affected, and more people are being directly impacted by the H1N1 novel virus we are seeing this year. Cases continue to occur."
Cox had some welcome news on the nature of the virus itself. She said during the teleconference that a preliminary analysis of the H1N1 strain finds it lacks certain "virulent characteristics" that made the 1918 flu pandemic strain so deadly.
And the new Secretary of Health and Human Services, Kathleen Sebelius, has made the decision to buy 13 million more courses of antivirals to replenish the antiviral stockpile, Schuchat said. "We don't know if we are going to need them, we just wanted to be ready," she said.
In addition, in the last 24 hours, the United States has shipped 400,000 regimens of antivirals to Mexico, believed to be the source of the global outbreak, at the request of the Mexican government, Schuchat added.
Meanwhile, President Barack Obama on Friday urged Americans to stay calm, noting that it was not clear whether the global outbreak of the never-before-seen flu strain was any worse than "ordinary flus." But, he added, agencies across the U.S. government are preparing for the worst, according to the Associated Press.
If swine flu "is relatively mild on the front end, it could come back in a more virulent form during the actual flu season," he said at the end of a Cabinet meeting.
Elsewhere, the World Health Organization reported late Friday that the number of confirmed cases worldwide has risen from 364 in 13 countries, with 10 deaths, to 615 cases in 15 countries. And Asia announced its first case, in Hong Kong. Officials there quarantined an entire tourist hotel where the victim, a traveler from Mexico who entered via Shanghai, had stayed Thursday night before getting sick, according to The New York Times.
The news out of Mexico appeared brighter. Late Thursday, Cordova said the number of new swine flu cases seemed to be leveling off.
Still, Mexico braced for a shutdown of all non-essential services, including all schools, through Tuesday as authorities sought to limit further infections in that country, where the virus has stricken 156 people, killing nine.
In the United States, the CDC says there are 50 confirmed cases in New York, 28 in Texas, 13 in California, 16 in South Carolina, five in New Jersey, four each in Arizona and Delaware, three each in Illinois and Indiana, two each in Colorado, Kansas, Massachusetts, Michigan and Virginia, and a case each in Kentucky, Minnesota, Nebraska, Nevada and Ohio.
On Monday, a 23-month-old Mexican boy who had traveled to Houston for medical treatment died, becoming the first -- and so far, only -- fatality in the United States.
Speaking at a press conference on Thursday, CDC Acting Director Dr. Richard Besser said that while most cases appear to be mild, "six of the cases have been hospitalized, including the unfortunate case we reported yesterday of the child in Texas who passed away."
And scientists were racing to produce a vaccine against the new flu strain, but the shots -- if needed at all -- wouldn't be available until fall at the earliest, U.S. health officials said Thursday.
(As of May 1, 2009, 11:00 AM ET)
