4 NYC deaths linked to swine flu
Pastor Dale Morgan
4 NYC deaths linked to swine flu*
By VERENA DOBNIK,
Associated Press Writer AP - Wednesday, May 27
NEW YORK - The deaths of two more New Yorkers were linked to swine flu
Tuesday as the city struggled to contain the outbreak of the virus in
its sprawling school system.
Twenty schools reopened, including one whose assistant principal was the
first person in New York City to die of swine flu. But five more schools
were closed, and the confirmation that two people who died Friday had
swine flu brings the number of deaths possibly caused by the virus to four.
"Our hearts go out to their families," Health Commissioner Thomas
Frieden said.
The outbreak began more than a month ago when hundreds of students at
St. Francis Preparatory School in the Fresh Meadows section of Queens
became sick.
All of the four known victims also had other underlying health
conditions, Frieden said.
The two people whose deaths were disclosed Tuesday were a 41-year-old
Queens woman and a 34-year-old Brooklyn man. Lab results confirmed that
they had swine flu but the exact cause of their deaths will be
determined by autopsies, Frieden said.
Meanwhile, the Queens school whose assistant principal became the first
New Yorker to die of swine flu once again bustled with activity Tuesday.
The Susan B. Anthony Intermediate School, Intermediate School 238, was
among 20 schools or programs that reopened after being shuttered as a
precaution amid the city's 330 confirmed cases of the H1N1 virus.
"We just want to keep things moving," said principal Joseph Gates as he
helped load two buses of students headed for a school trip to
Washington, D.C.
Mitchell Wiener, I.S. 238's assistant principal, died May 17. A woman in
her 50s died Saturday. The names of the swine flu victims other than
Wiener have not been released.
At Public School 19 in the Corona neighborhood of Queens, Chancellor
Joel Klein welcomed the children to their reopened school.
Third-grader Eric Sobarzo was dropped off by his big brother, Peter
DeCaprio, who said he was confident that "whatever the problem was here,
they must have fixed it."
Of the 20 schools or school programs that were to reopen Tuesday, 16 are
in Queens, two in the Bronx and one each in Manhattan and Brooklyn.
Five others closed in early May had already reopened.
But as some schools reopened, five others closed Tuesday: one each in
the Bronx, Queens, and Manhattan, and two in Brooklyn. They will reopen
Monday.
City officials said last week the reason for the closings was mainly to
protect the most vulnerable _ young children, the elderly, pregnant
women and anyone with a chronic medical condition like asthma or
diabetes. Some schools reported last week that as many as two-thirds of
their students were absent.
Frieden said his department surveyed two schools with high absentee
rates and found that only one-fourth of the absent children were
actually ill.
___
Associated Press writer Deepti Hajela contributed to this report.