Deadly Swine Flu Outbreak Linked to U.S.
If you haven't already heard the latest news, there has been a very troubling development south of the US border where hundreds of people have come down with a new strain of swine flu and which has already killed 60 people. The following article is the most up to date information that we have at this point...
A new strain of pig flu found in seven people in California and Texas is linked to the virus that has broken out in Mexico and killed as many as 60 people.
A strain of pig flu found in eight people in California and Texas is linked to the deadly bird flu that has killed as many as 61 people and sickened more than one thousand in Mexico.
The head of the Centers for Disease and Prevention said the group was working with the World Health Organization to respond "as rapidly as possible to this threat."
"We do not know whether this swine flu virus or some other influenza virus will lead to the next pandemic," acting director Dr. Richard Besser said. "However, scientists around the world continue to monitor the virus and take its threat seriously."
The strain of flu found in the U.S. are the same as the one that has killed dozens in Mexico, according to the CDC.
"From everything we know to date, the virus appears to be the same," Besser said. "So far, the genetic elements we have looked at are the same."
A child from San Diego who has since recovered from the illness was the most recent case of swine flu in the U.S., he said.
The World Health Organization said it was extremely worried that the virus could start a pandemic across North America as scientists in the U.S. and Mexico tried to determine if the deaths were due to the same new strain.
"We are very, very concerned," WHO spokesman Thomas Abraham. "We have what appears to be a novel virus and it has spread from human to human."
"It's all hands on deck at the moment," he said.
President Obama had been informed and is following the outbreak closely, an administrative official said Friday.
It's unclear how the U.S. victims caught the illness since none of the seven people had contact with pigs and few had contact with one another. Among the victims was a child who has since recovered, the head of the CDC said Friday.
Cases involving swine flu in the U.S. have been mild and only one of the patients had to he hospitalized, according to the CDC.
"It is a virus that mutated from pigs and then at some point was transmitted to humans," Mexico's Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova told the Televisa network.
Mexico was forced to shutter schools in its capital and surrounding areas following an increase in the number of kids who reported having flu-like symptoms. The government closed museums, libraries and state-run theaters in the city of 20 million later on Friday.
Copyright Associated Press / NBC Dallas-Fort Worth
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