More late-breaking info.
WASHINGTON, April 25 (Reuters) - Kansas state health officials have
confirmed two cases of swine flu, just minutes after New York health
officials said they had eight probable cases, CNN reported on Saturday.
Health officials across the United States are testing for the new and
unusual strain of H1N1 swine flu that is suspected of killing 68 people in
Mexico and that has caused mild illness in at least eight people in the
United States.
Meanwhile, NYC private school kids had the NYC Health department run tests on an influenza-like illness, and eight speciments showed up as Influenza A, non-typable. This may well mean swine flu (other kinds of flu could have been identified by the excellent NYC DOH lab, one of the best in the country), and CDC will confirm tomorrow.
Tests have confirmed that eight New York City schoolchildren had a type A influenza virus, likely swine flu, city Health Commissioner Dr. Thomas Frieden said on Saturday.
This appears to be very mild illness in NYC, continuing the US pattern, and word is that the kids are doing fine.
Also this information comes from WHO:
After reviewing available data on the current situation, Committee members identified a number of gaps in knowledge about the clinical features, epidemiology, and virology of reported cases and the appropriate responses.
The Committee advised that answers to several specific questions were needed to facilitate its work.
The Committee nevertheless agreed that the current situation constitutes a public health emergency of international concern.
Based on this advice, the Director-General has determined that the current events constitute a public health emergency of international concern, under the Regulations.
Concerning public health measures, in line with the Regulations the Director-General is recommending, on the advice of the Committee, that all countries intensify surveillance for unusual outbreaks of influenza-like illness and severe pneumonia.
The Committee further agreed that more information is needed before a decision could be made concerning the appropriateness of the current phase 3.
See discussion earlier today about what it all means re WHO phases.
For information about swine flu, see CDC's swine flu page and WHO's swine flu page.
For information about pandemic flu (this is not a pandemic, but the sites have a ton of flu info), see pandemic flu.gov, Flu Wiki and your local health department's web page.
Update [2009-4-25 17:27:29 by DemFromCT]: Science magazine has a bit here on how preparing for H5N1 helped us with swine flu identification. This is from an interview with the Naval Health Research Center (NHRC), which helped identify the San Diego swine flu cases.
Q: When did the NHRC increase its surveillance capabilities for influenza?
Our expansion was largely a result of an initiative by the Department of Defense’s (DOD's) Global Emerging Infectious System to intensify pandemic surveillance as a result of the avian influenza (H5N1) crisis. NHRC augmented existing febrile respiratory illness surveillance programs in military recruit trainees and ship-board populations and expanded into dependent populations in San Diego. Also, in a collaborative effort with the CDC, we developed surveillance on the Southern California-Mexico border, which was enhanced this year to deepen surveillance and augment diagnostic training of our Mexican collaborators via funding from the Department of State’s Biosecurity Engagement Program.