Swine flu kills first US resident; White House tells cities to stop closing schools

A Texas woman who lived on the Mexican border and was already weakened by chronic illness has become the first US resident to die of swine flu, officials announced Tuesday.

The news came as federal health officials reversed course and advised cities to quit closing flu-infected schools because the bug is turning out to be much less of a threat than first feared.

Officials did not release many details about the dead woman except to say she lived in Cameron County along the border and had other health problems.

The Texas Department of State Health Services said she died earlier this week.

Last week, a boy from Mexico City who died in a Houston hospital became the first fatal casualty of the virus in the United States.

Health officials said they expect the swine flu outbreak to keep spreading - and continued to predict more deaths.

The Centers for Disease Control reported 403 cases in 38 states, with another 700 or so probable cases.

But they said the virus isn't dangerous enough to outweigh the hassle of shuttering schools.

"We no longer feel that school closure is warranted," said CDC head Richard Besser.
"We are not seeing the rates of severe disease that had been reported initially out of Mexico."

He said the new swine flu is turning out to be similar to the regular flu which hits every winter and doesn't usually close schools.

"If you're seeing a very high mortality event, the potential benefits of school closures outweighs the risk," he said. "When you get to situations that are approaching that of seasonal flu, then the downsides start to outweigh the benefits."

Last week, fearing a repeat of the multiple deaths reported in Mexico, the government advised schools to shut down for about two weeks if a student came down with swine flu.

Local officials across the country began to panic at every sneeze and more than 725 schools closed nationally, disrupting the lives of nearly half a million students, not to mention their parents.

Besser told of hearing of children being dropped off at public libraries and parents losing their jobs because they had to stay home with their kids.

He said schools that suffer a really widespread cluster, like the hundreds of sick students at St. Francis Prep in Queens, should probably close just because going on with school with so many absences would be difficult.