ABC15.com

Pinal County Public Health officials received confirmation Thursday that a 64-year-old woman who died last week was positive for the H1N1 virus.  

According to the Arizona Department of Health Services, the woman had underlying health conditions and was being treated for pneumonia at the time of her death.

The death is the fifth statewide related to the H1N1 virus and the second death involving a resident of Pinal County. 

The first child to die from swine flu in Arizona was a 13-year-old boy from Tucson who died May 15.

A Maricopa County woman in her late 40s, a 57-year-old Pinal County woman and a preteen girl living in Pima County also died from complications of swine flu in late May.

The total number of confirmed cases in Arizona is 580 as of Thursday afternoon.

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News Sun

An elderly Gurnee man has become Lake County’s first victim of swine flu.

The Lake County Health Department is reporting that the 74-year-old man died shortly after being hospitalized on Tuesday, from complications due to the H1N1 flu virus. The unidentified man did have other medical conditions that increased his vulnerability to the virus, a health department spokeswoman said. He is the state’s fifth swine flu-related death.

 “We sincerely extend our sympathies to this individual’s family,” said Irene Pierce, the Health Department’s Executive Director. “While most cases of this illness are mild, pregnant women and individuals with chronic medical conditions, such as heart disease, lung disease, asthma or diabetes, should contact a health care professional about treatment if they think they have the flu.”

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By CARRIE ANTLFINGER, Chicago Tribune

MILWAUKEE – A Milwaukee adult is the first in Wisconsin to die from swine flu, health officials said Thursday. 

City Health Commissioner Bevan Baker said the resident died from complications of the H1N1 virus, though the person also had a common underlying health condition that he would not specify. 

“There is a lot of this virus floating around in the community,” said State Health Officer Dr. Seth Foldy. “Those who need to worry about it most are those who are at risk.” 

Baker said conditions that make people more at risk include being older than 65 or under 5, pregnancy, heart or lung problems, a compromised immune system and diabetes. 

He would not release the victim’s age or sex and didn’t know the day of death or how long the person was in the hospital. He would only say the report came in over the last 24 hours.

The federal Centers for Disease Control‘s latest update, Wednesday morning, counted 17 H1N1 deaths inthe U.S., which did not include the Wisconsin case. 

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Associated Press

LANSING, Mich. (AP) – Michigan officials say a Macomb County woman is the first in the state to die from swine flu.

A spokesman from the Michigan Department of Community Health said Wednesday the woman died Tuesday from complications of the H1N1 virus.

Details about the woman’s age and hometown were not immediately available.

Michigan had 298 confirmed cases of swine flu as of Tuesday afternoon. The virus had infected people in 33 of the state’s 83 counties.

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CBS News

Health authorities say two more New Yorkers have been killed by swine flu. 

The Health Department says both people who died were adults in their early and mid 40s. City officials didn’t release further details on where they lived or when they contracted the disease, citing patient privacy policies. 

At least seven people have been killed by the virus in the city. 

Six of the seven deaths have occurred in people with other health problems, presumably including at least one of the new deaths. One case is still being investigated. 

On Monday, the fifth person in New York City to die with swine flu was identified by The Daily News as 11-week-old Steven Montanez, of the Bronx. The family said the baby had the flu when his aunt found him unconscious Thursday. He died shortly afterward. 

Meanwhile, The World Health Organization said Tuesday it is “getting closer” to declaring a global outbreak of the virus as the infection appears to be taking hold outside of North America. 

WHO flu chief Keiji Fukuda said the disease has reached 64 countries and infected 18,965 people, causing 117 deaths. 

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By CRISTIAN SALAZAR, Associated Press

NEW YORK – A woman died over the weekend of swine flu, becoming the city’s second victim and the nation’s 11th.

The woman, who was in her 50s, had other health conditions,Department of Health and Mental Hygiene spokeswoman Jessica Scaperotti said. No other information on her case was disclosed Sunday.

Assistant public school principal Mitchell Wiener, who died May 17, was the city’s first death from the virus. The 55-year-old had been sick for several days.

There were 280 confirmed cases of swine flu in the city and 94 hospitalizations as of Sunday, Scaperotti said. The number of confirmed cases probably doesn’t fully reflect the spread of the virus, given that health officials aren’t testing everyone for the H1N1 strain.

“It’s most likely that if you’re sick with the flu, that you have the H1N1 virus,” Scaperotti said.

Those people with chronic health conditions such as diabetes and compromised immune systems who are suffering from flu-like symptoms should seek medical advice, Scaperotti said. Only those with more serious symptoms, such as shortness of breath, should go to emergency rooms, she said.

The city’s first outbreak of swine flu occurred about a month ago, when more than 1,000 teenagers at a Catholic high school in Queens began falling ill following the return of several students from vacations in Mexico, where the virus was first detected.

The virus has coursed through the city’s schools and even reached its jail system, where inmates’ visiting hours have been limited and hand sanitizer passed around. On Thursday, correction officials said they would sanitize a 2,600-inmate jail on Rikers Island.

The World Health Organization, as of Friday, had tallied more than 12,000 swine flu cases worldwide, with more than half of them in the United States. It counted at least 86 deaths, with 75 of those in Mexico.

Eighteen U.S. soldiers infected with swine flu have recovered after treatment on an American base in Kuwaitand left the country, a Kuwaiti health official said Sunday.

“They were treated and they have fully recovered,” said Youssef Mandakar, deputy head of Kuwait’s public health department. He said the soldiers had shown “mild symptoms” of the disease upon their arrival at an Air Force base.

Kuwaiti authorities confirmed that the soldiers came from the United States but would not say where they had gone, adding that the troops had no contact with the local population and were treated at U.S. military facilities.

Ibrahim Abdul-Hadi, an undersecretary at the Health Ministry, said the U.S. military had examined and quarantined a number of soldiers who mixed with the infected ones.

Kuwait is a major ally of Washington and a logistics base for U.S. military personnel serving in Iraq.

Raad Mahmoud, a spokesman for the Iraqi Health Ministry, said precautions are being taken at airports and border entry points, but he said Iraqi authorities have no authority over U.S. troops and the foreigners who enter with them. He said the U.S. military has to administer medical tests to everybody when they enter the country and the military must present the reports to the ministry.

U.S. Army Maj. Jose Lopez, a military spokesman, said there were no reported cases of swine flu amongAmerican troops in Iraq.

Poland’s Chief Sanitary Inspectorate on Sunday confirmed the country’s third case of swine flu in a 21-year-old who had just returned to Poland from the United States.

Jan Bondar, the spokesman for the state office, said the man returned on Friday and presented himself at a hospital for testing after getting a call from a friend in Washington whom he had spent time with and who had contracted the virus.

The Pole’s condition is not serious, Bondar said.

A Utah man with chronic health problems died Wednesday from complications associated with swine flu, a local health official said. If confirmed, it would be the ninth U.S. fatality associated with the flu outbreak.

The man, who was from around Salt Lake City, was between 18 and 25 years old and “had chronic medical conditions that may have contributed to severe complications from influenza,” said Gary Edwards, executive director of the Salt Lake Valley Health Department.

Also on Wednesday, health and education officials in New York announced that 21 of the city’s public schools had been closed after an increase of reports of students with flu-like symptoms. A school administrator in Queens died after being hospitalized with the H1N1 virus, commonly called swine flu.

Nineteen of the schools closed at the recommendation of the Health Department are public and two are private, the city’s Education Department announced in a news release.

In addition, two private schools in Manhattan — St. Davis Academy and Horace Mann — have decided on their own to close after a number of students exhibited flu-like symptoms, according the schools’ Web sites.

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