U.S. & World

WASHINGTON (CBS) ― Joe Biden said Thursday he advised his family to stay off airplanes and subways because of the new swine flu, a remark that forced the vice president's office to backtrack and prompted one airline official to complain about "fear-mongering."

"I would tell members of my family - and I have - that I wouldn't go anywhere in confined places now," Biden said on NBC's "Today" show.

Biden, who has a reputation for off-the-cuff remarks, went beyond any precautions recommended by the federal government. In discussing his personal advice to his family, he said simply, "That's me."

Within two hours, Biden's office issued a statement backing off the remarks and suggesting he was talking about travel to Mexico.

More Information Online:
* CDC Swine Flu Facts Sheet
* CDC Emergency Updates Via Twitter
* Swine Flu Twitter Live Search Results
* David Burnia's Swine Flu Watch On Twitter
* Google Map Of Suspected, Confirmed Cases

"On the 'Today Show' this morning, the vice president was asked what he would tell a family member who was considering air travel to Mexico this week," said spokeswoman Elizabeth Alexander. "The advice he is giving family members is the same advice the administration is giving to all Americans: that they should avoid unnecessary air travel to and from Mexico. If they are sick, they should avoid airplanes and other confined public spaces, such as subways."

Biden, who has three grown children and five grandchildren, was asked whether he would advise his own family against flying to Mexico on a commercial flight.

"It's not just going to Mexico, if you're in a confined aircraft and one person sneezes it goes all the way through the aircraft," Biden said on NBC. "That's me. I would not be at this point, if they had another way of transportation, suggesting they ride the subway."

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommends avoiding nonessential travel to Mexico. But it isn't recommending that people avoid other travel because of the swine flu.

American Airlines spokesman Tim Smith declined to comment directly on the vice president's remarks, but said, "To suggest that people not fly at this stage of things is a broad brush stroke bordering on fear mongering."

"The facts of the situation at this stage anyway certainly don't support that," Smith told The Associated Press.

U.S. Travel Association President Roger Dow urged the public to "heed the advice of medical experts" and gently chided the vice president without specifically mentioning him.

"Elected officials must strike a delicate balance of accurately and adequately informing citizens of health concerns without unduly discouraging travel and other important economic activity," Dow said in a statement Thursday.

During his decades as Delaware senator, Biden was a regular on Amtrak, riding the train from Wilmington to Washington.

Asked on NBC's "Today" show whether the U.S. government should close the border with Mexico, Biden said health authorities advise that would be impractical and noted the new flu is already in the U.S. and several other nations.

Instead, Biden said, the focus should be on slowing the spread of the virus through groups of people in close quarters, such as airplanes, malls, stadiums and classrooms.

"Closing the classroom and closing the border are two fundamentally different things," he said.

The CDC recommends basic precautions such as hand-washing, use of alcohol hand gels and monitoring local health advisories when traveling. The government also advises that children with the flu be kept home from school and day care. Biden said he hoped employers would be generous with workers who stayed home to care for a sick child.

Biden and Dr. Richard Besser, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, reinforced the government's stance on a border amid confirmation that the virus now has penetrated 11 states and there have been roughly a hundred school system closings.

President Barack Obama ruled out a border closing during his prime time televised news conference Wednesday night, likening such a move to "closing the barn door after the horses are out."

Biden told interviewers on the morning network news shows he sympathizes with parents worried about the spread of the disease in this country, but said that shutting down America's borders would be far more complicated - and would carry potentially great consequences - than simpler steps like closing schools and canceling or postponing public meetings.

The vice president said that in addition to stressing personal hygiene, people should focus prevention efforts on confined places, settings for opportunistic infection such as airplane cabins, malls and classrooms.

Biden also reiterated on Thursday the advice the administration has been eagerly dispensing: "A parent whose child's school is closed out of a precaution or because there's been a confirmed case of flu should not take child then to a day care center. They're going to have to take them home."

"And the hope is that the employers will be generous in terms of how they treat that employee's necessary action of taking that child home and not being at work," he said.

Besser earlier reported confirmed swine flu cases in 10 states, including 51 in New York, 16 in Texas and 14 in California. The CDC counted scattered cases in Kansas, Massachusetts, Michigan, Arizona, Indiana, Nevada and Ohio. State officials in Maine said laboratory tests had confirmed three cases in that state, not yet included in the CDC count.

"It is time for people to pay attention, for people to do planning and to understand what they can do to prevent the infection," he said.

"This is a period of great uncertainty," he acknowledged. "It's a situation that is evolving rapidly and we are trying to study the impact of school closures on control of this as they're taking place." Besser said officials want to ensure that "school closure is in fact decreasing risk of spread in a community and not taking children who would have been at school and sending them out to malls and other places."

Asked why the administration has not turned to thermal sensors to detect people with the fever, Besser said officials don't consider them effective, "especially for an inspection where you are able to transmit if you're infected the day before you have symptoms."

Biden was asked whether he would advise his own family against flying to Mexico and back on a commercial airliner.

"I would tell members of my family - and I have - that I wouldn't go anywhere in confined places now," he said. "It's not just going into Mexico. If you're any place in a confined aircraft and one person sneezes, it goes all the way through the aircraft."

Asked if the government was including this in its official health guidelines, Dr. Anthony Fauci, an infectious disease specialist with the National Institutes of Health, said no. He said the CDC "is not really at that point."

Fauci also said that U.S. public health experts would not be surprised if the World Health Organization soon declares a swine flu pandemic, saying "it's moving in that direction."

Schools aren't the only focus. In California, dozens of Marines were under quarantine to see if they'll develop illness after contact with a comrade confirmed to have the new flu.

U.S. scientists are racing to develop the key vaccine ingredient - a strain of the virus engineered to trigger the immune system. But they cautioned Wednesday that it would take several months before enough doses could roll off assembly lines for the necessary testing in human volunteers.

The U.S. has reported the only death outside Mexico - a Mexican toddler who visited Texas with his family.

Biden was interviewed on ABC's "Good Morning America," CBS's "The Early Show" and NBC's "Today" show and Besser appeared on ABC and CBS. Fauci was on the "Today" show.

The World Health Organization on Wednesday raised its alert level for the fast-spreading swine flu to its next-to-highest notch, signaling a global pandemic could be imminent.

The move came after the virus spread to at least 10 U.S. states from coast to coast and swept deeper into Europe.

"It really is all of humanity that is under threat during a pandemic," said WHO Director General Margaret Chan. "We do not have all the answers right now but we will get them."

In the United States, President Obama mourned the first U.S. death, a Mexican toddler who had traveled with his family to Texas.

Total American cases surged to nearly 100. But there are far more suspected cases, from a military base in California where 30 Marines are quarantined to the University of Delaware, where four people have fallen ill, reports CBS News correspondent Nancy Cordes.

"Schools with confirmed or suspected cases of H1N1 should strongly consider temporarily closing so that we can be as safe as possible," Mr. Obama said this morning.

The Fort Worth Independent School District announced Wednesday night that it would close all schools beginning Thursday; they will remain closed through at least May 8.

It is believed that the action was taken after the Center for Disease Control confirmed that a 12-year-old student at McLean Middle School has the new strain of the swine flu, reports CBS Station KTVT in Dallas/Fort Worth.

In Mexico, where the flu is believed to have originated, officials said Wednesday the disease was confirmed or suspected in 159 deaths and almost 2,500 illnesses. But in Mexico City, officials suggested the outbreak there seemed to be stabilizing, with far fewer deaths being reported.

The WHO says the phase 5 alert means there is sustained human-to-human spread in at least two countries. It also signals that efforts to produce a vaccine will be ramped up.

In Washington, Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano was questioned by senators on whether the U.S. should close its border with Mexico. She repeated the administration's position that questioning of people at borders and ports of entry was sufficient for now, and said closing borders "has not been merited by the facts."

The WHO made it clear earlier in the week that the virus had already spread so far and so fast that border restrictions were ineffective.

Mr. Obama said Americans must maintain great vigilance and respond appropriately to swine flu cases cropping up in their communities. He also said the outbreak was cause for deep concern, but not panic.

Dr. Richard Besser, the acting chief of the Centers for Disease Control, said in Atlanta that there were confirmed cases in 10 states, with 51 in New York, 14 in California and 16 in Texas, where officials said Wednesday they were postponing all public high school athletic and academic competitions until May 11.

Two cases have been confirmed in Kansas, Massachusetts and Michigan, while single cases have been reported in Arizona, Indiana, Nevada and Ohio. State officials in Maine said laboratory tests also had confirmed three cases in that state, although those had not yet been included in the CDC count.

Probable cases of swine flu surfaced in two more states Wednesday.

In Pennsylvania, a 2-year-old Philadelphia is thought to have contracted the virus more than a month ago, several weeks before the current outbreak was recognized in the United States. Officials say the boy is fully recovered and has no known risk factors.

In Missouri, Gov. Jay Nixon said Wednesday evening that state health officials believe a Platte County resident probably has contracted the virus and that a sample is being sent for confirmation to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

And South Carolina health officials said they have identified seven additional "probable" cases of swine flu, bringing the total number to 17.

Officials with the Department of Health and Environmental Control said Wednesday the agency is also investigating dozens of "suspected" cases of swine flu.

The developments come on Mr. Obama's 100th day in office and the first in which he has a complete cabinet. Former Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius was sworn in as Secretary of Health and Human Services last night and went to work immediately at dealing with the swine flu outbreak.

Tensions are particularly high in Texas, where the first U.S. death from swine flu was reported today. The victim was a 23-month-old toddler from Mexico City, who had traveled to Brownsville, Tex. to visit family April 4.

On April 8, he developed flu symptoms. He checked into a Brownsville hospital on April 13 and was later transferred to Children's Hospital in Houston. He died Monday night. Mr. Obama today extended his "thoughts and prayers" to the boy's family.

Laboratory testing shows the new virus is treatable by the anti-flu drugs Tamiflu and Relenza, and the first shipments from a federal stockpile arrived Wednesday in New York City and several other locations in the U.S. The government was shipping to states enough medication to treat 11 million people as a precaution.

Federal officials insist they have enough courses of the Tamiflu - roughly 50 million - to weather even a major outbreak, reports Cordes.

"The question is how rapidly and effectively can that Tamiflu actually get into the hands of families that need to take it when they need to take it," Dr. Irwin Redlener of Columbia University told Cordes. For the Tamilflu to be effective, a patient must take it within 48 hours of having flu symptoms.

"Flu is a very serious disease, and we're treating this outbreak very seriously," Besser told The Early Show. "We're taking aggressive action to try and control this."

In a possible outbreak north of the Mexican border, the commandant of the Marine Corps said a Marine lieutenant in southern California might have the illness and 39 Marines were being confined on their California base until tests come back.

Marine General James Conway told a Pentagon briefing an initial test indicated the sick Marine - who was not identified - might have swine flu but his illness did not appear life-threatening.

"This is obviously a serious situation," and "we are closely and continuously monitoring" it, Mr. Obama said of the spreading illness.

Meanwhile, Egypt's government ordered the slaughter of all pigs in the country as a precaution, though no swine flu cases have been reported there. Egypt's overwhelmingly Muslim population does not eat pork, but farmers raise some 300,000-350,000 pigs for the Christian minority.

The disease is not spread by eating pork, and farmers were to be allowed to sell the meat from the slaughtered animals.

In fact, officials appeared to go out of their way on Wednesday to not call the strain "swine flu." Mr. Obama called the bug the "H1N1 virus."

"The disease is not a food-borne illness," Rear Adm. Anne Schuchat, CDC's interim science and public health deputy direct, told the Senate Homeland Security Committee.

She said the strain is particularly worrisome because "it's a virus that hasn't been around before. The general population doesn't have immunity from it."

People have various levels of protection against other more common types of flu because they are exposed to it over time, and that protection accumulates. She suggested that some older people might have more resistance to this particular strain than younger people because its traits might resemble outbreaks of decades ago.

Germany became the latest country to report swine flu infections. It reported four cases on Wednesday.

New Zealand's total rose to 14. Britain had earlier reported five cases, Spain four. There were 13 cases in Canada, two in Israel and one in Austria.

Mr. Obama said it is the recommendation of public health officials that authorities at schools with confirmed or suspected cases of swine flu "should strongly consider temporarily closing so that we can be as safe as possible."

He was underscoring advice that the CDC provided earlier to cities and states, and that some schools - most prominently in New York City - already have followed.

"If the situation becomes more serious and we have to take more extensive steps, then parents should also think about contingencies if schools in their areas do temporarily shut down, figuring out and planning what their child care situation would be," Mr. Obama advised.

He advised people to take their own precautions - washing hands, staying home if they are sick, and keeping sick kids home.

Mr. Obama said the federal government is "prepared to do whatever is necessary to control the impact of this virus." He noted his request for $1.5 billion in emergency funding to ensure adequate supplies of vaccines.

CDC for days has said people with flulike symptoms should stay home - but now also is stressing that other family members should consider staying home or at least limiting how much they go out until they're sure they didn't catch it.

Besser, the acting CDC director, called it "an abundance of caution," but stressed that it's voluntary and that the government hasn't urged actual quarantine, which isn't really effective with flu.

Besser told The Early Show that trying to determine why the disease has caused so many more fatalities in Mexico than elsewhere was "a critical question" for American scientists working on the ground with their counterparts south of the border.

(© 2010 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)

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