A second student at Folger McKinsey Elementary School in Severna Park has come down with what is probably the swine flu, state health officials said Saturday.
That student apparently caught the infection by riding the school bus with a neighbor, a 7-year-old boy whose suspected case of the flu led Gov. Martin O'Malley on Friday to close the school - and three others where students appear to have been sickened. A fifth school is also being closed, officials said Saturday, this one because a teacher at University Park Elementary School in Prince George's County has a likely case of the swine flu.
In all, state health officials on Saturday announced four new probable cases of the infection - a Harford County man, an Anne Arundel County woman, the student and the teacher - bringing to 15 the number of probable cases in Maryland. But the state still hasn't confirmed a single case, due to a backlog at a swine flu testing laboratory at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.
Still, confirmed cases of the new strain of influenza, being commonly referred to as the swine flu but now being called the H1N1 virus in scientific circles, are showing up in more people in the United States and around the world. At the same time, in Mexico, the epicenter of an outbreak that has now touched at least 16 countries across the globe, officials are saying the virus may be sickening and killing fewer people than previously believed. And the World Health Organization said there are no signs that the flu is spreading outside of North America.
Dr. Anne Schuchat, the CDC's interim deputy director for science and public health, told reporters Saturday that the news out of Mexico "appears to be encouraging." But, she said, it is not the time to let up on prevention or efforts to fight the infection in the U.S. "Wash your hands," she advised. "Stay home if you're sick."
On Saturday, the CDC said that the number of confirmed cases is now up to 160 in 21 states. There have been 13 hospitalizations and one death. The seasonal flu kills an average of 36,000 people each year in the U.S.
"We have a new influenza virus," Schuchat said. "It's spreading. We don't know as much as we'd like to about how it's going to behave in our communities."
She said that while about a third of the confirmed U.S. cases of swine flu are people who had been to Mexico and likely picked up the infection there, many people are getting it while in the U.S.
