NEW YORK — At least five people were in U.S. hospitals with swine flu as the number of cases nationwide rose to 66 on Tuesday and a federal health official warned that deaths were likely.
Most of the nation’s confirmed cases were in New York City, where the health commissioner said “many hundreds” of schoolchildren were ill with what was “most likely swine flu.” The city announced 45 confirmed cases, all affiliated with a Catholic high school, where some students recently took a spring break trip to Mexico.
Richard Besser, acting director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, noted that although ordinary human flu accounts for 36,000 deaths every year, he was concerned by this strain.
“I fully expect we will see deaths from this infection,” Besser said at an Atlanta news conference.
That was echoed by Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano.
“It is very likely that we will see more serious presentations of illness and some deaths as we go through this flu cycle,” she said.
New York City Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden said that hundreds of students at St. Francis Preparatory in Queens had developed symptoms consistent with swine flu, although many hadn’t been tested to confirm it.
There were indications that the outbreak may have spread beyond St. Francis, with officials closing a school for autistic children, where 82 of 380 students have called in sick. Two suspected cases were hospitalized in New York, one has been released and the other is doing well, officials said.
At least five people have been hospitalized in the U.S.: three in California and two in Texas, Besser said.
Swine flu is believed to have killed 159 people in Mexico, the epicenter of the outbreak. The mayor of Mexico City cracked down further on public life, closing gyms and swimming pools and ordering restaurants to limit service to takeout.
Although the U.S. has advised against nonessential travel to Mexico, not every vacationer was scared away.
Kevin Stickle of Ferndale left Tuesday from Seattle with his wife for a weeklong beach vacation in Ixtapa despite the U.S. Centers for Disease Control’s recommendation to avoid nonessential travel to Mexico.
“The combination of fabulous weather, great beaches and food, another culture and some common sense far outweighs any fear or hysteria headlines that might tempt me to stay home,” Stickle said.
President Barack Obama asked Congress for $1.5 billion in emergency funds to fight the illness.
Still, U.S. officials stressed there was no need for panic and noted that flu outbreaks are quite common every year. The CDC estimates about 36,000 people in the U.S. died of flu-related causes each year, on average, in the 1990s.
For all the government intervention, health officials suggested that efforts to contain the flu strain might prove ineffective. Around the world, officials hoped the outbreak would not turn into a full-fledged pandemic, an epidemic that spreads across a wide geographical area.
“Border controls do not work. Travel restrictions do not work,” said WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl, recalling the SARS epidemic earlier in the decade that killed 774 people, mostly in Asia, and slowed the global economy.
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