Swine Flu Updates In US and From Across the World
Posted April 29, 2009 – 2:13 pm in: 'pandemic potential', Obama, mexico outbreak, swine fluDeaths: 159 in Mexico, seven confirmed as swine flu, the rest suspected.
Sickened: 2,498 suspected and 19 confirmed in Mexico. Confirmed elsewhere: 91 in U.S.; 13 in Canada; 14 in New Zealand; five in Britain; three in Germany; four in Spain; two in Israel; and one in Austria.
Confirmed U.S. cases by state: 51 in New York, 14 in California, 16 in Texas, two in Kansas, two in Massachusetts, two in Michigan, and one each in Indiana, Ohio, Arizona and Nevada, according to CDC and states.
U.S. Food and Drug Administration issues emergency guidance allowing certain antiviral drugs to be used in broader range of population if needed. Public health emergency declared and roughly 12 million doses of Tamiflu from federal stockpile to be delivered to states.
- Cuba bans flights from Mexico
- Argentina suspends flights from Mexico; U.S., European Union, other countries discourage nonessential travel there
- Mexico suspends all schools until May 6
- In U.S. some schools closed in Illinois, New York City, Texas, California, South Carolina, Connecticut, Minnesota and Ohio; President Barack Obama says more closings may be necessary
- Mexico City hands out surgical masks, closes public venues and cancels public events. President assumed new powers to isolate infected people.
- World Bank loaning Mexico more than $200 million
- and finally, in a very strange move (possibly to appease the masses?) Egypt begins slaughtering nation’s roughly 300,000 pigs as “precaution”