America's North Shore Journal

Just a brief summary of various closings and other news about the swine flu pandemic.

• 400 cases at West Virginia University
• 175 cases at Dartmouth
• Tucson charter school closed due to illness
• Cases in public schools near Tucson
• Catholic high school in Maryland closes due to illness
• Outbreak at school in Central Pennsylvania
• Watertown, NY area school with outbreak

And, then there is this piece of crap from Communist China:

CHINA reported its first death from swine flu on the mainland yesterday, an 18-year-old woman in the Tibet Autonomous Region’s capital Lhasa. The government said it was rushing tens of thousands of doses of flu vaccine to the western city.

The woman in Maizhokunggar County in Lhasa died of the H1N1 virus at about 3:20am on Sunday at the county hospital. She was admitted the previous day after experiencing coughing, a sore throat and muscular stiffness.

Her body temperature was as high as 40 degrees, a Tibetan regional health department official said yesterday.

The Ministry of Health sent 200,000 doses of vaccine to Lhasa by air yesterday to help contain the virus.

Meanwhile, Beijing reported its first swine flu case “with heavy symptoms” yesterday, a municipal health bureau official said.

A 72-year-old man is on a breathing machine in Beijing Ditan Hospital. He had suffered from chronic obstructive lung diseases for about 20 years and was confirmed to be infected with the H1N1 virus last Friday with a body temperature as high as 38.5 degrees, the official said.

The Chinese mainland had reported 21,453 confirmed cases by yesterday, about 78.7 percent of whom had recovered, according to the Ministry of Health.

Does anyone believe that this is the first death, much less the first case in the Chinese capital? China rushed a Swine Flu vaccine into production faster than any of the Western nations. Any bets on the safety of that vaccine?