Obama vows vigilance in dealing with swine flu

WASHINGTON (AP) — President Barack Obama pledged “great vigilance” in confronting the swine flu outbreak Wednesday night as it spread coast to coast across the U.S. The outbreak hit 11 states and closed schools amid confirmation of the first U.S. death — a Mexican toddler who visited Texas with his family — and the confinement of dozens of Marines after one came down with the disease in California.

Some 100 schools were closed, and more might need to be shut down temporarily, Obama said, declaring, “This is obviously a very serious situation.” The total confirmed cases in the U.S. rose to nearly 100, with many more suspected.

He spoke just hours after the Geneva-based World Health Organization, a United Nations agency, sounded its own ominous alarm, raising its alert level to one notch below a full-fledged global pandemic. Said WHO Director General Margaret Chan: “It really is all of humanity that is under threat during a pandemic.”

Dr. Richard Besser, acting chief of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said in Atlanta there were confirmed cases in 10 states, including 51 in New York, 16 in Texas and 14 in California. The CDC counted scattered cases in Kansas, Massachusetts , Michigan, Arizona, Indiana, Nevada and Ohio.

State officials in Maine said laboratory tests had confirmed three cases in that state, not yet included in the CDC count.

Also, Illinois officials cited nine “likely cases,” most of them in the Chicago area, and three schools were shut down.

And the Pentagon said a Marine at the Twentynine Palms base in California had been confirmed to be ill with swine flu and was isolated, along with his roommate. A Marine spokesman at the Pentagon, Maj. David Nevers, said the sick Marine was doing well and his condition continued to improve. Nevers said about 30 others who had been in contact with the sick Marine would be held apart for five days as well as to see if they show symptoms.

In Mexico, where the flu is believed to have originated, officials said Wednesday that the disease was now suspected in 160 deaths, and nearly 2,500 illnesses.

Despite calls from many U.S. lawmakers for tightening controls over the Mexico-US border, Obama ruled out that option, even though the swine flu outbreak has been at its most virulent and may have begun there.

At a prime-time news conference on his 100th day in office, Obama said he would heed the advice of health officials, to whom blocking the border “would be akin to closing the barn door after the horses are out, because we already have cases here in the United States.”

Instead, he said his administration had ramped up screening efforts and made sure needed medical supplies were on hand. “The key now is to just make sure we are maintaining great vigilance, that everybody responds appropriately when cases do come up. And individual families start taking very sensible precautions that can make a huge difference.”

He praised the Bush administration for making preparations for such a crisis, including stockpiling 50 million doses of antiviral medications.

“Because this is a new strain; we have to be cautious,” Obama said. “If this was a strain we were familiar with, then I think we wouldn’t see the kind of alert levels that we’re seeing, for instance, with the World Health Organization.”

Earlier, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said, “Closing our nation’s borders is not merited here.”

“This virus is already in the United States. Any containment theory ... is really moot at this time,” Napolitano said.

In fact, customs agents have delayed 49 people at the border because of flulike symptoms, and 41 of those have been cleared so far. Test results on the other eight were not complete.

Earlier Wednesday, Obama offered “my thoughts and prayers” to the family of a nearly two-year-old Mexican boy who died in Houston, the first confirmed U.S. fatality among more than five dozen infections. Health officials in Texas said the child had traveled with his family from Mexico to Brownsville on April 4 and had been sick for five days before being hospitalized there. He then was brought to Houston where he died Monday night.