PHOENIX, May 15 (UPI) -- Arizona health officials confirmed a 40-year-old woman died from complications of the H1N1 flu, formerly known as swine flu.
The woman's death was the first related to the H1N1 virus in Arizona and the fourth in the United States, The Arizona Republic in Phoenix reported.
The Maricopa Department of Public health confirmed Thursday the woman died last week from flu complications and had an underlying lung disease.
In New York, a middle school assistant principal was hospitalized and on a ventilator in the city's first serious case of H1N1 flu, The New York Times reported Friday. The city closed the school and two others schools reporting clusters of flu-like symptoms for at least a week.
"While the symptoms of H1N1 flu seem to resemble those of seasonal flu, the H1N1 virus seems to spread rapidly, so we're closing these schools in order to slow transmission," New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Thursday during a news conference.
The Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta identified 4,298 confirmed cases of H1N1 flu in the United States. The World Health Organization reported 6,497 cases of H1N1 flu have been confirmed in 33 countries, with 64 deaths in Mexico, four in the United States, and one each in Canada and Costa Rica.
