HOUSTON (AP) _ A Mexico City toddler on a family trip to visit relatives spent his last three weeks critically ill in Texas hospitals, finally becoming the first U.S. death from the swine flu.
Swine flu has killed hundreds in Mexico and sickened thousands worldwide.
The Texas Department of State Health Services says the boy, who was nearly 2 years old, arrived in the border city of Brownsville with “underlying health issues” April 4 and developed flu symptoms four days later. He was taken to a Brownsville hospital April 13 and transferred the following day to Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, where he died Monday night.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control confirmed that he had been infected with the swine flu virus.
Dr. Brian Smith, regional director of the Texas Department of State Health Services, says antiviral treatments were given to family members who had close contact with the child and none had contracted swine flu. He says that with the virus’ short incubation period, health officials would have begun seeing secondary cases among the child’s close contacts by now, but none have appeared.
Health officials insisted the 23-month-old child posed no contagion threat to Houston.
The hospital’s director of infectious disease says the child had no contact with other patients at Texas Children’s Hospital and none of the staff was exposed.