US News

MIKE LAMENTS SWINE FAUX PATIENTS HOGGING ERS

More worry-warts than swine flu victims are flooding hospital emergency rooms, Mayor Bloomberg said as he suggested flu fear is overblown even as three more Queens public schools were closed yesterday.

“While there are an abnormal number of people going to the hospital who are worried, virtually none, a very tiny percentage of them, have any symptoms whatsoever,” Bloomberg said.

He described those people as the “worried well.”

At one point yesterday, Lincoln Hospital in The Bronx had 187 kids in its ER, but only two had flu symptoms, authorities said.

With yesterday’s closure of the PS 242 Leonard P. Stavisky Early Childhood School in Flushing, and Bayside’s PS 130 and PS 993, there are now 24 shuttered public schools.

The Department of Education also posted attendance rates online for all city public schools yesterday.

More than half had rates of 90 percent or higher. Citywide attendance was 85.1 percent yesterday, down 4 percentage points from two weeks ago.

Meanwhile, a funeral was held for IS 238 assistant principal Mitchell Wiener, 55, the only city resident known to have died from swine flu.