"We are taking the proper precautions to address anything that happens," Gibbs said. "It's not a time to panic." Napolitano said the emergency declaration was a routine move to ensure that the government was prepared "in an environment where we really don't know, ultimately, what the size or seriousness of this outbreak is going to be." It seemed certain, however, that the number of swine flu cases - mild or otherwise - would rise. "As we continue to look for cases, we are going to see a broader spectrum of disease," Besser said. "We're going to see more severe disease in this country."
Because of the situation in Mexico, "I do feel that we will have deaths here," Dr. Anne Schuchat of the CDC said at a separate news conference.
Besser said that the CDC had isolated the swine flu virus and prepared a "seed stock" for the manufacture of a vaccine but will not distribute it to pharmaceutical companies until the situation becomes more severe. Manufacture of a new vaccine would take months.
Public health officials cast the various moves as aggressive but precautionary, and they counseled calm.
The eight confirmed cases in New York involved students at St. Francis Preparatory School in Queens. City officials had said Saturday that the virus involved was probably swine flu; the assumption was confirmed by researchers at the CDC.
Some of those students had taken a spring break trip in Mexico. Flu-like symptoms have been reported in some of the parents, but causes have not been confirmed. Officials also tested children at a New York day care center where illness had been reported, but those tests came back negative.
The new case in Ohio is a 9-year-old boy in Lorain County. He has a mild case of the disease and is recovering at home.
Previously announced cases included two in Texas, two in Kansas and seven in California's Imperial and San Diego counties. All the cases were mild, and the victims have recovered.
The Nova Scotia Department of Health Promotion and Protection said Sunday that four cases had been confirmed in Windsor, in eastern Canada. The victims were students who had recently traveled to Mexico. None of them have been hospitalized.
Two teenage boys in British Columbia in western Canada were also confirmed to have swine flu. Both had mild cases.
