President Obama asks Congress for $1.5 billion to combat swine flu outbreak
29 04 09 - 12:38
Asking for More Funding, U.S. Steps Up Flu Response
By LIZ ROBBINS and DONALD G. McNEIL Jr. - The New York Times
State and federal officials intensified their response to the swine flu outbreak on Tuesday, with President Obama asking Congress for $1.5 billion in supplemental funding.
The global response included more restrictions on travel to and from Mexico, identified as the likely origin of the outbreak and the only country to have reported deaths from swine flu. Officials there shut down schools across the country and limited restaurant service in Mexico City in an effort to curb transmission of the virus, which is suspected in the deaths of 159 people.
Israel confirmed its first two cases of swine flu, which is now in at least seven countries. Ten others, including China and Russia, which were set to quarantine passengers suspected of having the flu, are investigating possible cases.
Dr. Richard E. Besser, the acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, termed the early days of swine flu in the United States as a “prepandemic period” and was blunt about the potential impact of this influenza. “As this moves forward,” he said, “I fully expect that we will see deaths from this infection.”
He said that five people confirmed to have swine flu had been hospitalized in the United States — two in Texas and three in California, where Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a state of emergency. But the nation’s highest number of cases continued to be in New York City, where 45 people were confirmed to have swine flu.
In Washington, Congressional hearings addressed the seriousness of the outbreak.
“I really think we need to be prepared for the worsening of the situation,” Rear Adm. Anne Schuchat, the C.D.C.’s interim science and public health deputy director, told a Senate Appropriations health subcommittee. “It’s more of a marathon than a sprint,” she said, echoing what Dr. Besser had said on Sunday, when the country first declared swine flu a public health emergency.
Senator Tom Harkin, the Iowa Democrat who heads the subcommittee, noted that “there’s a lot of anxiety right now across the country.”
Still, that anxiety is not on the same scale as in Mexico, where the number of people believed to have been sickened was about 2,500 on Tuesday.
The economic response to the health crisis rippled from Mexico throughout the globe. Cuba canceled all flights to and from Mexico and Argentina banned all flights from Mexico. Carnival Cruise Lines said it had canceled Mexico stops for three of its cruise ships because of the swine flu alert, according to Reuters. So far, nine countries have some kind of ban on pork imports: China, Croatia, Indonesia, Lebanon, Russia, South Korea, Thailand, Ukraine and Ecuador.
Mexico City, meanwhile, was looking increasingly like a ghost town. On Tuesday morning, the city government ordered all restaurants, except those that serve take-out food, closed until May 6 to large gatherings of people. About 30,000 restaurants are affected. Movie theaters, bars and discos have also been shut.
But the city has yet to make the decision to shut down public transportation, a move that would freeze most economic activity in the capital. Schools all over the country were closed Tuesday, affecting some 33 million students, and many tourist sites were put off limits.
Citigroup’s Mexican subsidiary, Banamex, ran a newspaper ad asking customers to wear their masks and wash their hands. At bank branches, where employees have been told to wash their hands every hour, antiseptic gel dispensers were being installed. Banamex also asked customers to do as much banking by phone and Internet as possible.
Reporting was contributed by Anahad O’Connor and Anne Barnard from New York; Nicholas Confessore from Albany; David Stout from Washington; Marc Lacey from La Gloria, Mexico; Alan Cowell from London; Ian Austen from Ottawa; and Keith Bradsher and Mark McDonald from Hong Kong.