WORLD> America
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WORLD> America
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400+ schools closed as 161 flu cases confirmed in US
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-05-02 16:42 While emphasizing at a press conference that the closures to date represent a tiny fraction of the almost 100,000 schools in the country, Education Secretary Arne Duncan instructed teachers, parents and students to be prepared if their school does close.
To parents: "Learn about what they're learning at school. Keep them on task." And to students: "Don't fall behind your peers at other schools that are still in session. Keep working hard." Many travelers have become increasingly concerned about going to Mexico, though authorities there said new cases were leveling off. The Mexico City mayor said Friday that no new flu deaths were reported overnight for the first time since the emergency was declared a week ago. Mexico has confirmed more than 300 swine flu cases and has 16 confirmed deaths, although reports have indicated that roughly 120 may have died from it. US travelers have been advised to avoid nonessential travel to Mexico. Continental Airlines Inc., the biggest US carrier to Mexico, said Friday it would halve the number of seats it sells to fly there. Delta Air Lines Inc. and UAL Corp.'s United Airlines also announced plans for reduced flights to Mexico, while smaller carriers were following suit.
The energy secretary aide who apparently got sick helping arrange Obama's recent trip to Mexico told The Associated Press when reached at his office Friday that he was feeling better. The aide, Marc Griswold, a former Secret Service agent who was doing advance work for Energy Secretary Steven Chu, declined to elaborate beyond comments in The Washington Post. "We're not the Typhoid Mary family, for goodness sake," he told the Post in a story published Friday. "We've been told that we're not contagious. We're already past the seven-day mark for that." The White House has said Griswold did not fly on Air Force One and never posed a risk to the president. Though most US cases have been relatively mild and have not required a doctor's visit, US precautions include shipping millions of doses of anti-flu drugs to states in case they're needed, replenishing the US strategic stockpile with millions more treatment courses, and shipping 400,000 treatment courses to Mexico. The CDC added the following states to its list of those with confirmed cases: New Jersey with five cases, Delaware with four, Illinois with three, Colorado and Virginia with two, and Minnesota, Nebraska and Kentucky each with one. CDC previously had confirmed cases in New York, Texas, California, South Carolina, Kansas, Massachusetts, Indiana, Ohio, Arizona, Michigan and Nevada.
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