Swine flu forces more N.Y. schools to close

NEW YORK — The swine-flu virus continues spreading in New York City — closing three more schools Friday and showing up in a jail — while the disease also reached further into Asia among travelers returning from the United States.

An assistant school principal in New York, Mitchell Wiener, 55, remained hospitalized in critical condition Saturday, and an inmate who entered the city's jail complex on Rikers Island about a month ago was diagnosed with swine flu.

The city Department of Correction said the flu hadn't spread to other prisoners. The Rikers Island inmate — whose name and reason for being in custody weren't released — was improving since his hospitalization Wednesday, Correction Department spokesman Stephen Morello said.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) says more than 4,700 confirmed and probable cases have been reported in 46 states plus the District of Columbia. Five people have died in the United States, including one in Washington; all had underlying ailments.

Internationally, Malaysia, India and Turkey reported their first swine-flu cases, officially influenza A (H1N1), all involving people who had traveled from the United States. They are in addition to the 36 other countries where the World Health Organization says more than 8,000 cases have been confirmed.

In Turkey, health officials said the virus was detected in a man and his mother who had traveled to Istanbul from the United States. The Health Ministry said the two had arrived Thursday in Istanbul via Amsterdam, heading to Iraq.

Japan on Saturday confirmed its first case of swine flu caught within the country, showing that the effort to block the flu at the island nation's borders had failed.

The government ordered schools closed in parts of the port city of Kobe, where the Ministry of Health said a male high-school student who had not recently traveled abroad tested positive for the virus. Two other students at the school were suspected of having the virus. The latest confirmed case is Japan's fifth.