Federal health officials said Wednesday people born before 1957 appear to have some immunity to the swine flu virus, according to a report in The New York Times.
Daniel Jernigan, chief flu epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, told the newspaper blood tests from older people revealed antibodies that attacked the latest virus. Some Americans and Mexicans older than that have died of the swine flu, but it tends to infect and hospitalizes many more young people.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg, left, addresses a City Hall news conference in New York Monday. With Bloomberg are Deputy Schools Chancellor Kathleen Grimm, second left, New York City Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden, third left, and New York City Schools Chancellor Joel KleinSwine flu and New Jersey
Officials have closed an elementary school in New Jersey after an 8-year-old student was diagnosed with swine flu. School 3 on Myrtle Avenue in Fort Lee will remain closed until Tuesday.
Superintendent Raymond Bandlow said the boy became ill last week and is well enough to return to school. Meanwhile, a second student has also been tested. Results are not expected for several days.
State health officials have confirmed another case of swine flu involving a Bergen County resident. The man was diagnosed while in North Carolina. Essex County also has its first confirmed case.
That brings the total number of confirmed swine flu cases in New Jersey to 25. No one has died.
Confirmed cases are located in Bergen, Burlington, Hudson, Camden, Ocean, Essex, Monmouth and Somerset counties.
Two more New York City public schools closed Wednesday amid concerns about swine flu, and students were told to stay away longer than planned from a school that lost an assistant principal to the disease.
The announcement came as mourners paid respects at the administrator's funeral and the city began putting daily attendance rates online in response to parents' and teachers' concerns.
With the latest closings, at least 23 city public and private schools have shut down within the last week because of flu fears.
The latest are P.S. 242, where 10 students had flu symptoms within the last three days, and P.S. 130, where 12 students and 23 staffers became ill. Both are elementary schools in Queens. P.S. 130 also houses about 70 students from a special education school, P.S 993.
I.S. 238 -- whose assistant principal, Mitchell Wiener, was the first New Yorker known to have died of swine flu -- now will reopen to students Tuesday, rather than Friday, as initially scheduled. Teachers still will return Friday.
The city Health Department had no immediate explanation for the decision to bring teachers back first.
Students, officials, fellow educators and friends gathered at a funeral home to remember Wiener, who started teaching at the Queens school in 1978 and was known for going out of his way to aid students.
"Whenever I needed help, I used to always go to him," student Jeffery Grey told reporters outside the funeral home. "I really don't know who to go to now when I need help."
Wiener, 55, had been on a ventilator for five days and sick for several more before he died, according to his family.
Hospital and city officials say complications besides the virus probably played a part in Wiener's death. But his relatives have said he suffered only from gout, a joint disease.
They have blasted the city for not shutting down his school until the day after he was hospitalized. Some parents around the city also have questioned whether school closings should have been swifter or more sweeping.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Health CommissionerThomas Frieden defended the city's case-by-case rationale Wednesday for deciding whether to close its 1,500 public schools.
"I know people would like there to be a perfect formula where you can push a button and decide," but it isn't that simple, Frieden said. Factors include how many children are sick with a documented fever, for how long, and how that number has changed from day to day, the officials said.
-The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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