Mexico began a cautious return to normal Tuesday, traffic picking up in the capital and cafes reopening while Cinco de Mayo celebrations were called off throughout the country. The canceled events included the biggest one of all — a re-enactment of the May 5, 1862, victory over French troops in the central state of Puebla. And health experts warned that Mexico and the rest of the world needed to...

The head of the World Health Organization, Margaret Chan, yesterday suggested the swine flu pandemic alert would eventually move to its highest level. But the woman in charge of the global fight against the H1N1 outbreak said a move to level six should not be taken as a cause for panic. “Level six does not mean, in any way, that we are facing the end of the world. It is important to make thi...

Swine flu cases reached 1,085 worldwide, spreading to 21 countries and every major region of the U.S., health officials said. The symptoms, no more serious than those of seasonal flu, may worsen as seasons change. In the U.S., the H1N1 virus has been confirmed by laboratory tests in 286 patients in each of nine regions tracked by the U.S. census, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control a...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The new H1N1 swine flu has infected 286 people in 36 U.S. states and it is likely to spread to every state, the U.S. Centres for Disease Control and Prevention reported on Monday. Most cases remain mild but 35 have been hospitalized, the CDC’s acting director, Dr. Richard Besser, told a news conference. A toddler who died in Texas last week remains the only death...

Doctors tracking swine flu in California are investigating a new theory: What if it didn’t originate in Mexico but instead had been floating around the border region for months? Growing evidence in California suggests that early flu cases had no apparent origin in Mexico. Many of the early California victims — including the first two cases — say they hadn’t traveled to Mexico and h...

MEXICO CITY —  Mexico’s top epidemiologist says the World Health Organization was slow to react to an outbreak of atypical pneumonia that grew into the swine flu epidemic, and wants a probe. In a telephone interview with The Associated Press, Dr. Miguel Angel Lezana says he is troubled by the response of the Pan American Health Organization, or PAHO, and its parent organization, the WHO,...

U.S. authorities are pledging to eventually produce enough swine flu vaccine for everyone but the shots couldn’t begin until fall at the earliest. Worries about the spread of the virus mounted Thursday as the nation’s swine flu caseload reached 130, and nearly 300 schools closed in communities across the country. On Friday, the World Health Organization raised its tally of confirmed hu...

WASHINGTON — A security aide helping with arrangements during President Barack Obama’s recent trip to Mexico became sick with flu-like symptoms and three members of his family later contracted probable swine flu, the White House said Thursday. The disclosure from press secretary Robert Gibbs comes days after the White House played down risks to the U.S. delegation on the two-day trip ...

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...

In response to an intensifying outbreak in the United States and internationally caused by a new influenza virus of swine origin, the World Health Organization raised the worldwide pandemic alert level to Phase 5 on April 29, 2009. A Phase 5 alert is a “strong signal that a pandemic is imminent and that the time to finalize the organization, communication, and implementation of the planned mitig...