Updated: 4:36 pm EDT May 4, 2009
HENRY COUNTY, Ga. -- A second case of swine flu was confirmed in Georgia on Monday, closing a private school in Henry County until further notice.The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) confirmed Monday a middle school student at the Eagle's Landing Christian Academy tested positive for the illness. CDC officials said the school could be closed for up to two weeks.Tim Dowdy, president of the school said in the posting on the school's Web site that the school was closed "as a preventative measure."He said the school will undergo a "deep-cleaning."The CDC is also checking blood samples from three patients from metro Atlanta for swine flu, including a 3-year-old in Cobb County, a 36-year-old in DeKalb County and an 8-year-old in Clayton County.The Eagle's Landing Christian Academy serves students in grades pre-kindergarten through 12. It was not immediately clear whether other students were being tested for the illness.The academy is the first school in Georgia to close because of the swine flu outbreak.The health department said they suspect the 14-year-old middle school student got the flu from a 12-year-old sister who got it from a group that visited Panama. The middle school student is over being sick and was never hospitalized, but is still infectious, the health department said, so school is closed.“Wow. I think it’s scary. I think it’s very scary,” said Henry County resident Laurie Kidd.At least 533 schools enrolling about 334,000 children had closed across the country as of Monday because of the outbreak, according to the U.S. Department of Education. The schools are in about two dozen states.An entire school district west of Detroit closed after a high school student came down with an apparent case of the illness. All 140 schools in the Fort Worth (Texas) Independent School District have closed until May 8, a system that serves 80,000 students.The outbreak hasn't touched the majority of the nation's 132,000 schools, but a few have been hit heavily by the illness. One New York City high school had 45 students with confirmed cases of swine flu.At least 274 cases of swine flu virus have been confirmed in 35 states so far in the United States, a count by The Associated Press shows. The most recent CDC count was 226 cases in 30 states. The discrepancy can be attributed at least in part to a time lag in state reporting to the federal agency. And in some instances, states have identified "probable" cases that were not confirmed subsequently.Worldwide, at least 1,226 people have been sickened by swine flu. More than half of those were in Mexico.
