More than 100 schools from New York to California have closed down affecting 65,000 students as health and government officials raced to stop the spread of swine flu.

Swine flu continued its spread across the United States Thursday, with at least 109 cases confirmed in more than a dozen states.

Meanwhile, the World Health Organization said it plans to no longer call the deadly flu “swine flu” to avoid confusion over the risk from pigs and eating pork. Health officials have stressed repeatedly that the disease is being transmitted human to human and that there is no risk from eating pork.

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WHO spokesman Dick Thompson says the name change comes after the agriculture industry and the U.N. food agency expressed concerns that the term “swine flu” was misleading consumers and needlessly causing countries to order the slaughter of pigs.

He told reporters in Geneva “we’re going to stick with the technical scientific name H1N1 influenza A.”

Several countries have put a ban a pork imports. Egypt went as far as to slaughter several thousand pigs, and hog futures fell for the sixth time in seven sessions on Thursday because of continued speculation that people will stop eating pork.

Among the U.S. cases confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are 51 in New York, 16 in Texas and 14 in California, as well as scattered cases in Kansas, Massachusetts, Michigan, Arizona, Indiana, Nevada, Ohio, Maine and South Carolina.

On Thursday, state officials confirmed cases in Minnesota, Georgia, New Jersey and Colorado.

Nebraska’s chief medical officer says federal tests have confirmed the first case of swine flu in the state. It involves a California man in his 40s who’s vacationing in the Omaha area. Health officials have said the infection ultimately will be reported as a California case because the CDC counts cases of infectious disease by residence.

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In a news release Thursday, Dr. Joann Schaefer also said two more probable cases in Nebraska have been detected.

Thirty-nine Marines were confined to their base in California after one came down with the disease. The WHO has raised the total number of confirmed cases worldwide to 236.

About 100 of the nation’s 132,000 schools have closed. But they include schools on both coasts and in the nation’s heartland, and more are likely to shut their doors in coming days. Texas officials just suspended all public high school sports — smack in the middle of baseball season.

Of particular concern is New York City’s outbreak, with 51 confirmed cases and tests under way on three probable ones outside the city. City Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden said Wednesday that all those with confirmed cases are recovering, but two more city schools closed because of suspected cases — in addition to a Queens Catholic school with a large outbreak.

Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the city plans to announced new cases Thursday.

It was also learned that a Mexican toddler who visited Texas with his family and died Monday night in Houston, spent a day with his family shopping at a huge Houston indoor mall the day before he began to show symptoms, said Cameron County Judge Carlos Cascos, who interviewed the boy’s family.

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