Edgar Hernandez (left), 4, who according to Mexico's Veracruz state authorities survived the swine flu, plays in his garden in La Gloria, Mexico. --PHOTO: AP
CHICAGO - A 5-YEAR-OLD Mexican boy takes ill in his dusty village. He coughs, he sneezes, he gasps for breath.
Hundreds of Edgar Hernandez's neighbours in La Gloria - villagers who live among smelly pig-breeding farms that attract swarms of flies - already have flu-like symptoms. After they complain repeatedly, government workers arrive to conduct medical tests.
A hopscotching virus
In this age of global trade and travel, the swine flu outbreak has proven itself a global illness - a strange new virus that respects no border as it hopscotches from the dirt roads of Mexican villages to the concrete canyons of big-city America to a glittering Hong Kong hotel.
The list of the nationalities of some of its victims, in the last week alone, reads like the index of an atlas: Austria, Britain, Canada, Germany, Israel, Mexico, the Netherlands, Spain, Switzerland, the United States.
On the afternoon of April 24, Mexico's top epidemiologist got word from a lab in Canada. The respiratory infections that Mexican health officials had downplayed as common flu was a new swine flu.
The CDC said the strains matched the new virus popping up in the United States.
Edgar recovers, but his illness remains a mystery to his family - at least for a while.
Fast forward about a month, to late April.
A 9-year-old boy arrives at a medical clinic in Elyria, Ohio, an industrial city 20 miles (30km) southwest of Cleveland. He has a sore throat, body aches, fever and dizziness.
His mother consults a pediatric nurse practitioner, Sally Fenik; she thinks it's strep throat or an allergy. She also mentions to the nurse they've just returned from visiting relatives in Mexico but doesn't think it's swine flu because no one else in the family is sick.
But on her way to work, Ms Fenik has heard a radio news report about swine flu turning up in states bordering Mexico. She's far away, in the industrial Midwest, but remembers thinking, 'Boy, I hope that doesn't start spreading and getting worse.' After a rapid strep test on the boy comes back negative, Ms Fenik does a nasal swab.
A half-hour later, the lab calls. It's the type of influenza linked to swine flu virus.
This past Sunday, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention confirmed the third-grader from Ohio had swine flu. And then on Monday, the Veracruz governor swooped in by helicopter to La Gloria to tell Edgar's mother what medical experts already know - the kindergartner was Mexico's first confirmed case of swine flu.
Two boys in communities 1,700 miles (2,750km) apart - two pieces of a vast epidemiological puzzle. -- AP
