Worldwide swine-flu cases continue to grow

NEW YORK — An assistant principal at a New York school who had been hospitalized with swine flu died Sunday evening, the first death in New York State from the outbreak.

Meanwhile, the number of swine-flu cases in Japan soared over the weekend, raising the likelihood that the World Health Organization (WHO) soon will have to raise its pandemic alert level to 6, the highest level.

The assistant principal, Mitchell Wiener, had been "overwhelmed" by the illness despite treatment with an experimental drug, according to Ole Pedersen, a spokesman for Flushing Hospital Medical Center.

Three more New York schools have been closed after "documenting unusually high and increasing levels of influenza-like illnesses," New York City health and school officials announced Sunday.

"We are now seeing a rising tide of flu in many parts of New York City," said New York City Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden.

Japanese authorities ordered more than 1,000 schools and kindergartens in and near the cities of Kobe and Osaka to shut down. There were no confirmed cases in Tokyo.

Health experts are looking very closely at the spread of swine flu among people in Spain, Britain and Japan, a WHO official said Sunday.

Japan is well-known in public-health circles for being exceptionally nervous about flu; it has an aging population and a national obsession with cleanliness.

The swine-flu epidemic is already expected to dominate the WHO's annual meeting, a five-day event that begins Monday in Geneva.

Turkey and India also reported their first swine-flu cases this weekend.

The one in Turkey was an American heading to Iraq who was passing through the Istanbul airport when his fever was picked up by a thermal scanning camera. India's case was that of a 23-year-old who arrived in the southern city of Hyderabad from New York.