Swine Flu Cause of School Official’s Death
On Sunday the assistant headteacher (assistant principal) of a NYC school died due to the swine flu in the first fatality for the city. Mitchell Wiener, age 55, worked at Susan B. Anthony Middle School in Queens, New York City. He had been sick for almost a week before the school closed down last Thursday. Wiener was hospitalized and put on a ventilator.
Ole Pedersen, a Flushing Hospital Medical Center spokesman, said that the assistant school official was overwhelmed by the virus even though he had been treated with an experimental drug. Wiener has now become the six fatality of the virus in the United States, and like many of the other victims, he did have a pre-existing health problem, gout, of which it hasn’t been confirmed if the issue complicated his condition.
The first outbreak of the swine flu in New York City came three weeks ago when around 700 students and another 300 people associated with a Queens Catholic high school became ill upon the return of many students who had been vacationing in Mexico, where the outbreak began and has killed 68 people.
Five other schools in the city closed yesterday due to concerns of the virus, bringing the total of closed schools to 11. The schools closing in Queens will shut down for as long as 5 days, according to city officials. Four of these schools in Queens are public and another is Catholic, and three of the public schools are located in the same building.
As of 6 GMT yesterday morning, the World Health Organization reported 8,829 swine flu cases across 40 countries and 74 deaths.