Swine Flu Spreading Quickly in NYC, Mayor Says

NEW YORK, May 18 -- With a dozen schools in New York City closed because of the swine flu outbreak, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg (I) said Monday that the flu is spreading rapidly in the city and that officials will focus on minimizing its seriousness.

His announcement came a day after the death from complications of swine flu of Mitchell Wiener, 55, an assistant principal at a Queens intermediate school where four students had confirmed cases of the illness.

On Monday, students laid flowers and candles outside the closed doors of Intermediate School 238, where Wiener had worked since 1978.

"He was a loved person throughout all of 238," Armeen Hamdani, a student, told the local cable television station NY1. "He helped a lot of kids out. He was a nice man."

As many as 40 other city schools had high numbers of students and teachers out sick on Monday but remained open, including another Queens intermediate school with 300 students absent, said Ron Davis, a spokesman for the United Federation of Teachers.

City officials were struggling to manage the outbreak of a virus that seems to spread extraordinarily quickly but does not appear to be any more deadly than seasonal flu.

"Our goal is to decrease the number of people who have serious complications of flu," said Thomas R. Frieden, the city's outgoing health commissioner, who has been named to head the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. His replacement in New York, Thomas A. Farley, was announced Monday.

In a shift in the official advice for New Yorkers, Frieden urged those who suffer from diabetes, asthma and emphysema and who are exposed to flu to see a doctor to determine whether to take antiviral drugs as a precaution.

His advice came as health ministers from around the world met in Geneva to discuss preventive measures against the H1N1 virus.

At the annual meeting of the World Health Organization, Britain, Japan, and several other countries urged the WHO to change its criteria for declaring a pandemic, wire services reported. Officials said the agency should consider not only how fast a virus spreads but also how deadly it is.

But Margaret Chan, the WHO's director general, said the virus's lethality can vary from country to country. She also said that although the H1N1 virus has not been especially lethal, this could be "the calm before the storm," according to wire reports.

Around the world, 8,829 cases have been confirmed in 40 countries, along with 74 deaths, 68 of them in Mexico, according to the WHO. In the United States, more than 5,000 cases of swine flu have been confirmed and five people have died.

Bloomberg responded Monday to questions about whether the city should have closed Wiener's school sooner. The mayor said the best way to contain the disease would be to close all schools for a month and prohibit all interaction among children outside of school, but "the answer is, there's no way you could do that."

On Friday, Bonnie Wiener, who teaches at the same school as her late husband, told reporters that "I know we have a duty to educate the children of New York" but that "something just doesn't fit right."