Mexico City - Mexican authorities confirmed Friday the deaths of 20 people due to swine influenza over the past three weeks, while a further 48 deaths were suspected from the disease. The situation is so dire that Mexico City has closed its schools and President Felipe Calderon cancelled a visit to the northern city of Ciudad Juarez.
Mexican Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova Villalobos said that the World Health Organization (WHO) is sending experts, technical support and medicine to Mexico, to assist the authorities in controlling what the minister defined as a "controlled epidemic."
However, he stressed that Mexico has enough medication to combat the virus.
"We have fully identified the type of virus, and we have anti- viral drugs," he said.
Cordova Villalobos said the virus is transmitted from one human to another, and noted that there were 1,004 cases of infections across the country.
"We had confirmation that it was not the usual seasonal influenza virus," he had said earlier.
The minister said that this is the same virus that caused "isolated cases" of deaths among humans in 1976 in the United States. He said the virus may be effectively combatted with the vaccine against seasonal influenza.
Cordova Villalobos said that the authorities are set to give out surgical masks to hinder the propagation of the disease, which is highly contagious.
On Mexico's northern border, California and Texas have reported eight cases of swine flu since March, but no deaths as of yet, the US Centers for Disease Control said Friday on its website.
From December 2005 through February 2009, a total of 12 human infections with swine influenza were reported from 10 US states.
US officials said there was no evidence the people had been in direct contact with pigs, meaning an unusual strain of the respiratory infection is spreading from person to person, the Washington Post reported Friday.
Late Thursday, Cordova Villalobos announced - in a message broadcast by all major radio and television stations - the suspension of school and university lessons in Mexico City and its metropolitan area, where most of the cases have been located. Crowded events were also to be avoided, the authorities said.
The capital and the adjoining state of Mexico hold over 20 per cent of the country's population of 105 million.
Cordova Villalobos said the swine flu virus is "a mutant of a virus that comes from pigs, that had already been described in 1976."
Symptoms of the illness include very high sudden fever, headaches, red eyes, nasal flow and coughing.
The minister noted that lessons would "very probably" be suspended for several days.
"What we need to avoid is for it to get complicated," Cordova Villalobos said.
