Dallas County reports its first swine flu death

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Source: http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcont...11fe4007a.html

Dallas County reports its first swine flu death

12:08 PM CDT on Thursday, August 27, 2009

By AVI SELK / The Dallas Morning News
aselk@dallasnews.com

A 52-year-old woman with underlying medical issues has become the first person in Dallas County to die of the swine flu, health officials said today.


The announcement came this morning during a news conference as health officials provided details about the upcoming flu season - which is expected to contain a mix of both the swine flu and the seasonal flu.

Health officials said the woman died Friday and were unable to provide any additional details on the case. "I do think we have been lucky up until his point to not have a death," said John Carlo, medical director for Dallas County Health and Human Services.

As of Aug. 8, Dallas County had logged 431 confirmed cases of swine flu, which scientists refer to as H1N1. There, however, may be more cases that have gone unrecorded since the county health department stopped accepting lab samples of potential cases in May.

The flu outbreak began in Mexico in the spring, and the first U.S. fatality occurred after a 22-month-old boy from Mexico City visited Brownsville. The virus has since spread across the country and around world, causing more than 500 deaths in the United States and territories and claiming more lives elsewhere.

At Texas Christian University, the student newspaper, the Daily Skiff, reported that the number of swine flu cases jumped from 10 on Monday to 88 by Wednesday.

Don Mills, vice chancellor for student affairs, told the newspaper that the university in Fort Worth was treating all flu cases as swine flu.

Tarrant County health officials are expected to hold a news conference about the flu season this afternoon.

[Pathfinder]

Re: Dallas County reports its first swine flu death

Aug 27, 2009 1:29 pm US/Central Dallas County Reports First H1N1 Flu Death

A 52-year-old Dallas woman has died of H1N1, also known as Swine Flu.

The woman is the first confirmed H1N1 death in Dallas County.

Health officials said Thursday the woman had other pre-existing conditions, which made it more difficult to recover once she contracted H1N1. Health officials would not give specifics on the woman's pre-existing conditions.

The woman died August 21st and test results now confirm H1N1 was the cause of death.

In Fort Worth, at least 80 Texas Christian University students have fallen ill with flu-like symptoms, and health officials believe some of the cases could be H1N1.

The university is following new Centers for Disease Control guidelines. The campus is not being closed and no classes have been canceled, but TCU is taking numerous precautions to prevent spread of the virus.

Earlier this week, Governor Rick Perry and other state officials said that while swine flu still poses a risk, they're better prepared for any outbreak as traditional flu season nears.

Texas has 2.5 million courses of anti-viral medications on hand. It has requested another 800,000 from federal health officials as the traditional flu season nears. The medication can be used to treat swine and seasonal flus though a swine flu vaccine won't be available until mid-October.

The first vaccine for swine flu will be distributed to states by population and should go to people considered most vulnerable to the disease: school-age children, people chronic health conditions and pregnant women.

Texas officials are urging residents to take other commonsense steps like frequently washing their hands, covering coughs and using alcohol-based hand sanitizing products.

A report by the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, delivered Monday, said that while the impact of H1N1 was impossible to predict, a "plausible scenario" is that the epidemic could "produce infection of 30-50 percent of the U.S. population this fall and winter, with symptoms in approximately 20-40 percent of the population (60-120 million people), more than half of whom would seek medical attention."

http://cbs11tv.com/health/swine.flu.H1N1.2.1147547.html