Swine Flu

United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon urged people to remain vigilant against swine flu on Tuesday as the number of cases around the world shot up to almost 10,000.

Public health officials are seeing a number of outbreaks of swine flu at schools nationwide, but closing those schools may not always be the best public health measure, a federal scientist said Tuesday.

TUESDAY, May 19 (HealthDay News) — Underscoring the belief that the new H1N1 swine flu is no more dangerous than regular flu, U.S. health officials said Tuesday that people hospitalized for swine flu who have underlying health problems fare worse than otherwise healthy people who also have been hospitalized.

Drug manufacturers won’t be able to start making a swine flu vaccine until mid-July at the earliest, weeks later than previous predictions, the World Health Organization said Tuesday. It will then take months to produce a new vaccine.

The number of swine flu infections in Japan rose to 196, most of them school students, as the outbreak spread to a third western prefecture, officials and media said.

Inmates at a Mexico City prison rioted Tuesday over restrictions on visits due to swine flu, as the country reported two more confirmed deaths, raising the toll to 74 nationwide.

New York City health officials say tests conducted on a toddler who died after being hospitalized with respiratory symptoms indicate he wasn’t infected with swine flu.

The World Health Organization urged drugmakers to reserve some of their pandemic swine flu vaccine for poor countries, but received few concrete offers as experts disclosed that an effective flu shot is still months away.

The rapid spread of swine flu from Mexico surprised Pentagon officials, who had been focused on a possible Asian-borne pandemic in a response plan that would give the military a last-resort role in helping to impose quarantines and border restrictions.

Mexico’s swine flu death toll rose by four as the virus continued to spread through Latin America and made inroads in Asia, with the number of Japanese infections topping 200.