Health officials say two more people in Los Angeles County have died of swine flu, bringing the total death toll in the county to three. The county's health officer, Dr. Jonathan Fielding, said Wednesday that the latest victims had underlying medical conditions. One of the recent victims was a pregnant woman. Her baby survived.
Overall, 23 swine flu deaths have been recorded in California as of July 2, the latest statewide tally available.
became infected. The first, a 5-year-old girl from Minneapolis, had been fragile since infancy. The two announced Wednesday -- one a child; one an elderly hospital patient -- also had underlying complications.
That might be reassuring to healthy people, but it's one reason why health officials have been monitoring the new flu so carefully: A broader outbreak could quickly kill dozens of people with conditions as common as asthma, diabetes and heart disease.
That's what happens every winter when the seasonal flu bug strikes. People with common but compromising health problems are the ones most at risk when they also contract the flu.
In fact, the most common health problem among Minnesotans hospitalized with swine flu is asthma, state health officials said Wednesday.
"This novel virus is affecting the same groups" as regular seasonal flu, said Dr. Aaron DeVries, an epidemiologist with the Minnesota Department of Health.
Only at this point there is no vaccine to protect the medically vulnerable from the new flu.
It's largely for the sake of those vulnerable people, primarily sick children and the elderly, that health officials keep repeating the wash-your-hands, cover-your-cough mantra to stop the flu's spread.
Those with heart and lung disease, for example, have a 100-fold increase in the risk of death from flu, said Dr. Greg Poland a flu expert with the Mayo Clinic in Rochester.
Nationally, each winter about 36,000 people die and 200,000 are hospitalized from standard seasonal flu, and the vast majority had some kind of underlying health condition.
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