May 10, 2009 11:37 am US/Central
Will County Flu Tallies Rise as Labs Catch Up
WILL COUNTY (Aurora Beacon News) ―
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DNA test kits of the the influenza A(H1N1) virus prepared by PrimerDesign Ltd are displayed at the company laboratory in Southampton on May 2, 2009.
Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images
The reported H1N1 flu head count continues to climb rapidly, jumping more than 70 percent in Will County in just two days.
"We are up to 31 confirmed (cases)," Will County Health Department spokesman Vic Reato said mid-morning Friday.
Two others, which the Illinois Department of Public Health was including in its most recent report, were not yet conclusively verified, Reato said.
The increase represents a substantial jump from Wednesday's tally of 18 confirmed illnesses in Will County, which included two Neuqua Valley High School seniors and a 12-year-old girl who attends Ira Jones Middle School in Plainfield. All three are reportedly recovering at home, and the schools remain open.
"I don't think (the increase) is really necessarily indicative of anything," Reato said. "It would be hard to read anything into it. There's just a big backlog of cases."
DuPage County also has seen its numbers rise, from 26 on Wednesday to 32 by Friday morning.
As of Friday's 10 a.m. update from the Centers for Disease Control, Illinois led the nation by far, counting 392 confirmed cases statewide. Wisconsin had the next largest number, with 240.
Other states posting large confirmed-case counts included New York, with 174; Arizona, at 131; and California, 107.
In all, the CDC tally showed 1,639 cases confirmed in the U.S. Two people have died from the virus.
The eye-opening numbers for Illinois may be attributable to the state being among the first to take over the definitive testing procedures that initially were being conducted by the CDC alone. The federal agency passed along the task to the individual states late last week as the influx of samples in need of analysis grew beyond its capacity to process them in a timely manner.
International disease trackers added 285 new laboratory-confirmed cases of H1N1 flu in the last half of the day Thursday. The tally - which is expected to continue its upward arc as local labs catch up on backlogged specimens - stood at 2,384 in the update released at 1 a.m. Illinois time.
The latest count in Mexico, which has seen the largest outbreak by far, was 1,112. The death toll there remained unchanged, at 42.
(CBS 2, the Naperville Sun and the Aurora Beacon-News are news partners covering stories in the western suburbs. Send story tips to tips@cbs2chicago.com. (© MMIX, CBS Broadcasting, Inc. All Rights Reserved.)
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