Island woman dies of swine flu

A Galveston woman has died as a result of contracting swine flu, the Galveston County Health District reported Tuesday.

It is the first known death in Galveston County from the 2009 H1N1 virus.

The health district had few details about the death. It reported only that the woman was 30 to 35 years old, was a resident of Galveston and was being treated at a hospital.

Health district spokesman Kurt Koopmann said he did not have information about what hospital was treating the woman.

The health district also did not say when the woman died and did not release her name. Koopmann said the health district was informed of the woman’s death Tuesday afternoon.

While the woman’s death was the first in Galveston County, health officials in Harris County reported eight people had died as a result of the virus since June 15. Six of those deaths have occurred since Sept. 23, Harris County health officials said.

The latest was a teenage boy who died Oct. 18.

While widespread, it is not clear how many cases of swine flu there are in Galveston County because the health district stopped tracking swine flu cases in August, Koopmann said.

The news of the woman’s death came soon after the county’s health district announced it had received 5,000 doses of H1N1 vaccine for Galveston County residents at high risk of acquiring the illness and would begin immunizations this weekend.

Nationally, swine flu has resulted in more than 1,000 deaths so far. Flu illnesses are as widespread now as they are at the winter peak of normal flu seasons, Dr. Thomas Frieden, the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said last week.

Nearly 100 children have died, CDC officials also said.

There have been more than 20,000 hospitalizations nationally, federal officials said.

On Friday, President Barack Obama declared the swine flu pandemic a national emergency.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.