First flu death in US as new EU cases reported

A 23-month-old Mexican baby yesterday died in Texas from the H1N1 swine flu, becoming the first death in the United States from a virus which officials fear could cause a pandemic as it spread to two more countries in Europe.Â

"The child was a Mexican who traveled to the city for medical treatment," a Houston health official said. It is the first death from swine flu reported outside Mexico, the country hardest hit by the outbreak with 159 suspected deaths. U.S. officials have confirmed 91 cases of swine flu, most of them mild but with five hospitalizations in California and Texas. Richard Besser, acting head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said he expected more bad news, according to a report by Reuters.

Virus grips Europe

As the World Health Organization, or WHO, called an emergency meeting to consider its pandemic alert level, Germany and Austria confirmed new cases, becoming the third and fourth European countries hit by the disease.

Germany confirmed three swine flu cases and Austria one, while the number of confirmed cases rose to four in Spain and five in Britain, according to The Associated Press count.  New Zealand's number of cases rose to 14, 13 of whom were among a school group that recently returned from Mexico. Two people in Israel have been placed in quarantine with flu symptoms, officials said a day after two nationals were confirmed to have contracted the virus.

In France, President Nicolas Sarkozy met with Cabinet ministers to discuss swine flu and Minister of Health Roselyne Bachelot said France will ask the European Union to suspend flights to Mexico. She said flights from Mexico could continue.

The U.S., the EU, and other countries discouraged nonessential travel to Mexico, Cuba has banned flights to and from Mexico and Argentina has suspended flights arriving from Mexico. Egypt began slaughtering the roughly 300,000 pigs in the country as a precautionary measure against the spread of flu even though no cases have been reported here yet.

 Name debate

A debate was raging yesterday over the name for the type of influenza, reported Agence France-Presse. Farming and economic lobbies have objected to the term "swine flu," arguing that it could have a disastrous impact on pork sales and pig farmers even though the WHO has underlined that the virus cannot be caught by eating cooked or "properly handled" meat.  The World Organization for Animal Health argued that it was "not justified" to call it swine influenza because the virus had not been found in animals so far.

"We will use the term Mexican flu in order not to have to pronounce the word swine," Deputy Health Minister in Israel said on Monday.

"European Union Commission is calling it ’novel flu virus’ just to avoid the misunderstandings with the animal diseases because it costs a lot to the industry," said spokeswoman Nina Papadoulaki.