Thursday, September 10, 2009 WASHINGTON: Outbreaks on college campuses are signaling swine flu hot spots as fast-spreading H1N1 swine flu gives an early start to the fall flu season.College campuses as far apart as Emory in urban Atlanta and Washington State in rural Pullman report explosive outbreaks of swine flu. The action isn't all on campus, Elementary and high schools are also seeing a lot of flu; 24 schools last week dismissed 25,000 students because of flu outbreaks.One of the CDC's main indicators of flu season is the number of people seeing a doctor for flu-like illness. That statistic last week shot sharply up. That uptick was mainly because of swine-flu hot spots in the Southeastern U.S., with flare-ups in widely separated communities across the nation. "It is time to pay attention," the CDC's disease chief, Anne Schuchat, MD, said today at a news conference.The CDC can't predict where swine flu will strike next, how long it will linger in communities, or when it will come back. Yet so far, the pandemic is developing very much as experts expected:The vast majority of swine flu cases have been mild, with people getting over the worst of it in three to five days. Swine flu spreads most quickly among children, teens, and young adults. In every nation, the pandemic appears as a series of widely separated community hot spots that flare up and die down -- not as a wave moving from east to west or north to south. Children and adults at risk for flu complications -- those with lung conditions (including asthma), neurologic conditions, heart conditions, immune suppression, pregnancy, or under 5 years old -- tend to be those with the most severe disease.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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