San Diego health officials discuss the latest swine-flu developments around the county.
Dr. Wilma Wooten, the county public health officer, offered her update at 3:30 p.m. at what has become a daily debriefing. The county now has help from four employees of the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention as well as three state workers, Wooten said, who added that the help was welcomed and a big aid to the county's efforts.
Wooten said there are now 57 lab-confirmed cases in California. Eight of those people have been hospitalized. The number of confirmed cases in San Diego sat at eight on Thursday, since no new cases were confirmed. She did stress, however, that there are 13 probable cases in th ecounty as well.
The capacity for testing is not high. Wooten said the county can only check 20 specimens a day; the state, 100. She said that of the 109 tested in San Diego in all, 70 had been negative, 34 were positive for flu, and of those 34, 14 were "un-subtypable" -- and were possibly swine flu, and possibly not.
Among the first bits of information Wooten offered was a correction. A case she discussed Wednesday -- that of a 3-year-old girl who had been briefly hospitalized, was a probable case and not a confirmed case of swine flu.
