Tests verify swine flu

• By SONIA SMITH & SANDY DAVIS
• Advocate staff writers
• Published: May 3, 2009 - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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Gov. Bobby Jindal said Sunday that seven Louisiana schoolchildren in three parishes tested positive for human swine influenza, the state’s first confirmed cases of the virus.

Testing at the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta confirmed five cases in Lafayette Parish, one in Ascension Parish and one in Orleans Parish, he said. 

All seven children are being treated at home with anti-viral medication and are responding well, Jindal said. 

Louisiana has another 16 suspected cases — seven adults and nine children — and those samples have been sent to the CDC for testing, Jindal said. 

State health officials sent two additional samples to the CDC Sunday, bringing the total sent to the agency to 25, Jindal said. Nine of those have been tested, with two coming back negative for swine flu, he said. 

The two samples that tested negative were from in St. Tammany and St. Martin parishes. Jindal said that both of those cases were in older people who did not have a link to Mexico.

It will take between two and four days to get the results on the remaining 16 samples, state officials said.

Jindal said the five confirmed cases in Lafayette Parish are all students at Cathedral-Carmel School, which closed voluntarily on Wednesday.

The governor said state officials believe there was a cluster of infections at five parochial schools in Lafayette Parish, including Cathedral-Carmel, because of the intermingling of students between schools.

St. Pius and Our Lady of Fatima closed voluntarily Friday. State officials Saturday announced that Ascension Episcopal would not open today. 

Jindal also announced on Sunday the closure of St. Thomas More High School because a student with flulike symptoms attended school on Friday. That student has a sibling who attends Cathedral-Carmel and is a suspected case. 

Jindal dubbed the closure “an aggressive but necessary step” to curb the further spread of swine flu in the Lafayette area. 

The state recommended that the schools close for up to 14 days, or when the last student diagnosed with the disease is symptom free.