Risk of import into Singapore elevated. Isolated imported cases may occur but there is no sustained transmission.
SUSPECTED AND CONFIRMED CASES
Deaths: Global total of 73
66 in Mexico; five in US; one in Canada and one in Costa Rica. Officials said the Canadian, US and Costa Rican victims also had other medical conditions.
Confirmed cases: WHO says 36 countries have reported a total of 8,451 cases, mostly in the US and Mexico. That total does not include Ecuador, Malaysia and Peru, which recently reported their first cases.
KEY DEVELOPMENTS
Britain's Foreign Office said on Friday that it believes travel to Mexico is now safe as the number of reported new cases of swine flu in Mexico has declined.
US health officials are seeing a surprisingly high number of cases of ordinary, seasonal flu at a time when the flu season typically peters out.
The CDC is downgrading its warnings about travel to Mexico. The CDC had urged people to avoid nonessential travel to that country, but that was changed Friday to just a precaution for people at high risk of flu complications.
In New York City, three public schools in the borough of Queens were closed after hundreds of children were sent home sick this week, and a city official said Friday that three more schools would be shut down after students developed flu symptoms.
The fifth US death attributed to swine flu was reported Friday in a 33-year-old Texas man who died May 5 or May 6 after becoming sick a few days earlier.
