Via the New York Times: Swine Flu Death Toll in Argentina Climbs. Excerpt:
The death toll from swine flu in Argentina continued to rise as President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner said she would not rule out closing major public venues where the virus could spread more quickly.
Dr. Juan Manzur, the new health minister, said Friday that 44 people had died from swine flu and that the country had 2,800 confirmed flu cases.
The numbers reflected a sharp increase compared with a week earlier, when there were 26 deaths and 1,587 cases.
Swine flu has killed more people in Argentina than in any other country in South America, where the winter flu season is just beginning. The death rate of 1.6 percent is more than three times the world average, Claudio Zin, the health minister of Buenos Aires Province, said Friday.
Argentina passed Canada this week as the country with the third-highest death toll from the flu, but it remains behind Mexico and the United States.
Dr. Manzur said that officials now suspect that there are 100,000 cases of swine flu in the country, compared with 320,000 cases of other types of flu. The government has been slow in confirming cases, doctors said, because it only has one state laboratory doing the testing.
Mrs. Kirchner tried Friday to calm an anxious public but did not discount the possibility that officials would close movie theaters, discos and other public places to try to contain the flu’s spread.
“We cannot rule out anything,” she said. “Measures will be taken as they are deemed necessary.”
Argentina was ill-prepared for the global swine flu pandemic, and some private health officials have said that Mrs. Kirchner’s government should have declared a state of emergency before national congressional elections last Sunday.
That would probably have entailed delaying the elections, which Mrs. Kirchner had moved up by four months in a bid to increase the chances that her husband, former President Néstor Kirchner, could prevail in his race for Congress. He failed to come in first, hurting the couple’s chances that one of them could win the presidency in 2011.
Several doctors, including some who were advising the health ministry, have said that Graciela Ocaña, the former health minister, had recommended calling a national state of emergency and delaying the elections, but was overruled. Ms. Ocaña resigned Monday and has yet to discuss the issue publicly.
