The Daily News  

Published May 7, 2009

LEAGUE CITY — Health officials Wednesday reported the county’s first “probable” case of swine flu.  

A League City teenager was sick but did not attend class or social events while she was ill, health district officials said. 

The 15-year-old girl did not require hospitalization and has fully recovered from the illness, Galveston County Health District spokesman Kurt Koopmann said.  

The health district did not say how long the girl had been ill.

The school the teen attended won’t be closed, which would not have been the case last week when health officials urged school closures even in cases or probable infection. 

“Because the H1N1 flu is behaving like seasonal flu in severity, public health officials have shifted prevention strategies from school closures to keeping ill students and staff home until well,” Dr. Mark Guidry, the health district’s chief executive officer, said. 

In Washington, D.C., officials with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said they identified genetic characteristics of the virus and were in position to produce a vaccine if one is needed. 

Dr. Dennis Carroll, a special adviser on pandemics with the U.S. Agency for International Development, said investments to stave off an avian flu epidemic aided the quick swine flu response. 

Canada, meanwhile, said researchers at the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg, Manitoba, genetically sequenced three samples of the virus from Mexico and Canada, a breakthrough they hope will answer questions about how it spreads and mutates. 

The swine flu seems to have a long incubation period — five to seven days before people notice symptoms, according to Dr. Marc-Alain Widdowson, a medical epidemiologist from the CDC now tracking the flu in Mexico City. And that means the virus can keep being spread by people who won’t know to stay home. 

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

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