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.
Friday, August 14, 2009 MUMBAI: A 26-year-old woman died Thursday of H1N1 swine flu in the southern city of Bangalore, raising India's death toll from the virus to 20, authorities said.The death was the first reported in India's information technology capital, the Press Trust of India reported.Meanwhile in Pune, the worst-affected in India, two more victims of the virus died Thursday, raising the death toll in that western city near Mumbai to 12, the report said. The victims were an 11-month-old boy and a 75-year-old old woman.US media reported movie halls, schools and colleges were ordered closed Thursday for three days to a week in Mumbai, the commercial and financial capital of the country, as fear of the pandemic spread.Prajakata Lavangare, a spokeswoman for the government of Maharashtra state of which Mumbai is the capital, said similar orders were issued in Pune, which is also located in the state.The woman who died in Bangalore was identified only as Roopa, a teacher in
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