NEW YORK — The swine flu virus continues spreading in New York City – closing more schools and showing up in a jail – while the disease also reached further into Asia among travelers returning from the United States.
An assistant school principal in New York remained hospitalized in critical condition Saturday and an inmate who entered the city's jail complex on Rikers Island about a month ago was diagnosed with swine flu on Friday.
The city Department of Correction said the flu hadn't spread to other prisoners in the 13,200-inmate system.
The Rikers Island inmate in custody was improving since his hospitalization on Wednesday and wasn't in serious condition, Correction Department spokesman Stephen Morello said.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says more than 4,700 confirmed and probable cases have been reported in 46 U.S. states plus the District of Columbia. Five people have died in the United States, all with underlying ailments.
Internationally, the countries of Malaysia, India and Turkey have reported their first cases, all involving people who had traveled from the United States. They are in addition to the 36 other countries where the World Health Organization says more than 8,000 cases of the disease have been confirmed.
The assistant principal in New York, Mitchell Wiener, worked at one of six schools that have been closed for a week because of the latest rash of suspected swine flu cases.
Wiener's wife, Bonnie, told reporters he had been feverish and sick for nearly a week before his intermediate school shut down.
Wiener's son, Adam, said his father began "hallucinating and wasn't coherent" on Wednesday before he was rushed to a hospital.
City health officials are tracking schools with high absence rates. A spokesman for the United Federation of Teachers, Ron Davis, said it received reports from 18 other schools of high student absences and had forwarded the information to the city's health department.
Spokeswoman Jessica Scaperotti said the health department was "continuing to monitor the influenza-like symptoms in all schools throughout the city and will evaluate on a case-by-case basis."
Japan on Saturday confirmed its first case of swine flu caught within the country, despite an effort to block the flu at the island nation's borders.
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