Confirmed cases of swine flu continue to rise in U.S.

The number of confirmed cases of swine flu continues to increase, but federal health officials credit much of that to less of a backlog of pending tests.

“We expect to see a large number of increase in those numbers [because] there are still a large number of backlogs in states,” said Dr. Richard Besser, acting director of the national Centers of Disease Control and Prevention.

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Phil Skinner/pskinner@ajc.com

Dr. Richard Besser

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While the virus is continuing to spread” more and more of the infections cannot be linked to Mexico, where the swine flu was first reported, Besser said.

As of 11 a.m. Thursday, there were 896 confirmed cases of swine flu in 43 states, including Georgia. There are an additional 925 probable cases pending confirmation. The number of confirmed and probable cases increased by 330 in the past 24 hours.

“This is a marathon and not a sprint,” Besser said at the Thursday briefing. “We expect it [the virus] to progress around the world.”

He said investigators are not seeing evidence that the virus is “petering out” but this flu is not as serious as originally thought. It is more like a seasonal flu.

All states and 78 countries have received CDC testing kits. Once any state has had CDC confirmation on five cases tested by state health officials, federal health officials will no longer be required to confirm an H1N1 infection.

Besser said the median age of people with swine flu is 15 years old. It has infected patients as young as 1 month old and as old as 87.

Most of the cases confirmed so far — 58 percent — were in patients younger than 18.