WASHINGTON (AFP) — The US government reported Monday more than 400 new cases of swine flu to take the nation's total number of infections above 5,000, and said it remained on guard for an autumn upsurge.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) said the number of confirmed and probable cases in 47 states plus Washington's District of Columbia now stood at 5,123, up from 4,714 on Friday.
A teacher at a New York school who had been in critical condition for days died Sunday after being infected with the A(H1N1) virus, taking the US death toll to six. Only Mexico has suffered more deaths from the disease.
The CDC has downgraded a travel warning for Mexico but Anne Schuchat, director of the agency's center for immunization and respiratory diseases, took issue with media reporting that is now playing down the outbreak.
"The H1N1 virus is not going away, despite what you may have heard," she told reporters, stressing that the number of confirmed cases in the United States may be only the "tip of the iceberg."
"Unfortunately based on the trends we're seeing, we do expect more illness, more hospitalizations, and more deaths," Schuchat said, with more than 200 people already requiring hospital treatment in the United States.
The CDC quit doing a separate state by state map two days ago. They are now throwing swine flu in with other flu statistics. This graph shows the explosion of swine flu in the last two weeks. Swine flu cases are the dark blue part of the stacked bar.
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