State public health officials were tracking nine suspected cases of swine flu in Illinois on Wednesday as the World Health Organization raised its alert status to Level 5, a step from declaring a global pandemic.
The Illinois Department of Public Health said people likely infected with the new flu virus included five in Chicago, one in DuPage County, two in Kane County and one in Lake County, ranging in age from 6 to 36.
The University of Chicago Medical Center announced that two of the nine were employees there.
Another suspected swine flu victim was Michael Hairsine, 20, a political science major at Loyola University Chicago in Rogers Park.
On Saturday, Hairsine said he thought he had allergies. On Sunday, he woke up with body aches. By Sunday night, his fever was so high that his dorm roommates were icing him down.
On Monday, he visited the campus clinic and was packed off to an emergency room, then to quarantine, and then back to his parents’ home near St. Louis.
“I could hardly move,” Hairsine said by phone. “It was a chore to get out of bed. I felt absolutely terrible. I feel like it still is the flu, but it’s not so terrible that people should be freaking out the way they are.”
Even so, there is cause for concern. Doctors and pharmacists are worried about running low on the anti-viral medicine Tamiflu.
Hand sanitizers were set up Wednesday at city airports and at a Chicago Fire soccer game at Toyota Park in Bridgeview.
Early Wednesday, the first U.S. fatality from the swine flu was announced: a 23-month-old Mexican boy who had traveled with his family to Texas.
The flu outbreak is suspected of killing 159 people in Mexico and has sickened thousands in places as widely separated as Canada, New Zealand, Britain, Austria and Israel. Five new states announced Wednesday that they had confirmed cases of swine flu, bringing to 11 the total number of states with cases confirmed by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The rapid spread of the virus has prompted three school closings in the Chicago area, plus others in New York City, Texas, California, South Carolina, Connecticut, Minnesota and Ohio. Hard-hit Mexico had already suspended all schools until May 6. On Wednesday, Texas Gov. Rick Perry issued a disaster declaration, and the state suspended high school sports competitions until May 11.
In Illinois, Cinco de Mayo festivals scheduled for this weekend in Mundelein and at Navy Pier were canceled, organizers said.
“We decided that in order to keep everybody safe, we would … cancel the event this year,” said Eduardo Rodriguez, chairman of the Navy Pier event. “We’re going to err on the side of caution and make sure that our community, at least, is safe.”
As the outbreak spread, the WHO took the unprecedented step of raising the infectious disease alert level to 5.
At this level of alert, the likelihood of a pandemic “is very high or inevitable,” said Dr. Keiji Fukuda, WHO’s assistant director-general. The highest level, 6, would indicate that a pandemic was under way.
Outside the first Chicago-area school closed, Kilmer Elementary School in Rogers Park, parent Antonia Garcia said she can’t seem to get away from the specter of swine flu.
First her sister in Mexico called to say a clinic was testing her for the virus, and then the school attended by her 4-year-old preschooler, Justin, was shut down.
“When they called me, I felt chills in my body,” she said. “I’m worried for my children.”
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9 probable Illinois cases
Probable cases of swine flu were reported Wednesday by the Illinois Department of Public Health:
*12-year-old girl in Rogers Park, student at Kilmer Elementary School
* Michael Hairsine, 20, Rogers Park, student at Loyola University Chicago
*25-year-old man in Lakeview
*36-year-old woman in Woodlawn
*35-year-old woman in Hegewisch
*27-year-old man in Elmhurst
*18-year-old man in Geneva
*12-year-old girl in Kane County
*6-year-old girl in Lake County
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