Second swine flu death

The swine flu has claimed the life of a second U.S. citizen. The Washington Post reports that a woman in the southernmost part of Texas died earlier this week.

The first U.S. swine flu death occurred last week when a Toddler died in a Houston hospital.

Government authorities now say there are more than 400 confirmed H1N1 virus cases in 38 states. The virus is expected to continue to spread, although on Tuesday officials said the virus is not at severe as once believed. On Tuesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said the administration is “cautiously optimistic.”

The World Health Organization now says there are 1,490 confirmed cases of the virus worldwide.

Here’s a breakdown of the cases by state, per the Post:

In its latest bulletin on the outbreak, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) in Atlanta said this morning that 403 laboratory-confirmed cases of H1N1 flu have been reported, up sharply from the 286 tallied 24 hours earlier. The bulletin added two more states to the list of those with confirmed cases: Georgia and Maine, each with one infected person. The largest confirmed swine flu caseloads, according to the CDC, are in New York (90 cases), Illinois (82), California (49), Texas (41), Delaware (20), Arizona (17), South Carolina (16) and Oregon (15). The other affected states all have cases in the single digits.

jeremy.jacobs@digital-stage.thehill.com