1st US Swine Flu Death from Houston

The Cameron County judge says the young child who died from swine flu in Houston was visiting the Houston area for about four days before he ever got sick.

The 23-month-old Mexican native was confirmed as the first U.S. death from swine flu. No other cases had been reported in Houston as they had been in other parts of the state.

Kathy Barton, Chief of the Office of Public Affairs for the Houston Department of Health and Human Services, says the child would not have posed a contagious risk to other people in the Houston area because the child had not traveled throughout the city.

But Cameron County Judge Carlos Cascos, who's a friend of the boy's family, tells FOX 26 the family was visiting Houston between April 5 and April 8. When the family returned to Brownsville, the boy fell ill and was transported to Texas Children's Hospital via LifeFlight.

After arriving in Houston, the child was taken directly to a hospital, according to Barton. The HDHHS has not yet learned where in Mexico the child came from nor has it released the gender of the child.

The child's flu death in Texas was confirmed Wednesday by Dr. Richard Besser, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In an interview with CNN, he gave no other details about the child.

Germany confirmed three cases Wednesday and Austria confirmed one case.

Besser said he was saddened by the U.S. death, but added, "I don't think it indicates any change in the strain," he said. "We see with any flu virus a spectrum of disease symptoms."

The world has no vaccine to prevent infection but U.S. health officials aim to have a key ingredient for one ready in early May, the big step that vaccine manufacturers are awaiting. But even if the World Health Organization ordered up emergency vaccine supplies — and that decision hasn't been made yet — it would take at least two more months to produce the initial shots needed for human safety testing.

President Barack Obama asked Congress for $1.5 billion in emergency funds to help build more drug stockpiles. monitor future cases, and help international efforts to avoid a full-fledged pandemic.

"It's a very serious possibility, but it is still too early to say that this is inevitable," the WHO's flu chief, Dr. Keiji Fukuda, told a telephone news conference.

Cuba and Argentina banned flights to Mexico, where more than 150 people have died and 2,000 have been sickened by the swine flu virus. In a bit of good news, Mexico's health secretary, Jose Cordova, late Tuesday called the death toll there "more or less stable."

Mexico City, one of the world's largest cities, has taken drastic steps to curb the virus' spread, starting with shutting down schools and on Tuesday expanding closures to gyms and swimming pools and even telling restaurants to limit service to takeout. People who venture out tend to wear masks in hopes of protection.

The number of confirmed swine flu cases in the United States rose to 66 in six states. In New York, the city's health commissioner said "many hundreds" of schoolchildren were ill at a school where some students had confirmed cases.

New Zealand, Australia, Israel, Britain, Canada and now Germany have also reported cases.

But only in Mexico so far are there confirmed deaths, and scientists remain baffled as to why.

The WHO argues against closing borders to stem the spread.

"Border controls do not work. Travel restrictions do not work," WHO spokesman Gregory Hartl said in Geneva, recalling the SARS epidemic earlier in the decade that killed 774 people, mostly in Asia, and slowed the global economy.

The U.S. — although checking arriving travelers for the ill who may need care — agrees it's too late for that tactic.

"Sealing a border as an approach to containment is something that has been discussed and it was our planning assumption should an outbreak of a new strain of influenza occur overseas. We had plans for trying to swoop in and knock out or quench an outbreak if it were occurring far from our borders. That's not the case here," Besser told a telephone briefing of Nevada-based health providers and reporters. "The idea of trying to limit the spread to Mexico is not realistic or at all possible."

Authorities sought to keep the crisis in context: Flu deaths are common around the world. Still, the CDC calls the new strain a combination of pig, bird and human viruses for which people may have limited natural immunity.

Hence the need for a vaccine. Using samples of the flu taken from people who fell ill in Mexico and the U.S., scientists are engineering a strain that could trigger the immune system without causing illness. The hope is to get that ingredient — called a "reference strain" in vaccine jargon — to manufacturers around the second week of May, so they can begin their own laborious production work, said CDC's Dr. Ruben Donis, who is leading that effort.

Vaccine manufacturers are just beginning production for next winter's regular influenza vaccine, which protects against