US News

FEVER ON RISE AT ‘FLU’ HS

City officials yesterday revealed 20 new confirmed cases of swine flu at a Queens high school — and warned that many more victims are in the pipeline.

The new cases include 19 St. Francis Prep students and one teacher diagnosed with the potentially deadly virus. Eight students already had been confirmed as being infected, and 17 others are strongly suspected of having the strain.

Another 160 students and about 10 teachers also have fallen ill at the Fresh Meadows school and may have the bug, which is sparking fears of a global pandemic.

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“We believed that there were probably more than 100 cases of swine flu at the school, and lab tests are confirming what we suspected,” Mayor Bloomberg said. “We are dealing with a single cluster of swine-flu cases, all associated with this one school.”

Meanwhile, authorities are running tests on one person in Nassau County and two in Suffolk, all suspected of having swine flu.

Five New Jersey residents also are believed to have the flu. They come from several counties, and four of them recently traveled to Mexico, where the strain apparently originated.

Nationally, authorities said, 48 people now have confirmed cases of swine flu: In addition to the 28 New York victims, there are 11 in California, six in Texas, two in Kansas and one in Ohio.

The developments came as:

* President Obama called the situation “obviously a cause for concern and requir[ing] a heightened state of alert, but it’s not a cause for alarm.”

* The acting director of the national Centers for Disease Control said people in areas where swine flu has infiltrated should avoid kissing each other hello and goodbye.

* The Rye School of Leadership in Westchester County was closed as a precaution yesterday after about 20 students came down with flu-like symptoms last week.

* Mexico’s swine-flu death toll hit at least 149, while nearly 2,000 are now infected.

* Two newly confirmed cases were announced in Scotland, and one in Spain.

* The Dow Jones industrial average fell 0.6 percent, giving up earlier gains, as some analysts said investors were growing cautious over news that the flu was spreading.

In New York and nationally, infected people have had relatively mild symptoms, and no one has died, unlike in Mexico. Authorities have been puzzled as to why.

“It may have mutated into a less virulent” strain by the time Americans became infected, said Dr. Brian Koll, medical director of infectious-disease prevention at Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan.

The St. Francis students are believed to have become infected after eight of their class mates traveled to Can cun, Mexico, over spring break.

But one of the stu dents who went to Can cun, Danny Marketti, said neither he nor any one else on that trip has fallen ill.

“It’s so weird that none of us are sick, but everyone else is sick who didn’t even go,” said Marketti, 18. “We’ve been back for over a week already, and we didn’t get any symptoms at all.”

The maker of the anti viral drug Tamiflu yes terday said there was an “ample supply” of the medicine, which can be effective against swine flu — but some Queens drugstores can’t keep up with demand.

“This is the last one we have in the store,” said Abigail Alayeva, a pharmacist at Shalom Pharmacy in Flushing.

“We’ve had quite a few people come in asking about the flu and what they should do about it . . . They’ve been buying masks as well. We’re almost out of that, too.”

The ballooning volume of Internet chatter about the outbreak has even eclipsed the blogging and Twittering touched off by British singing sensation Susan Boyle.

The number of Web conversations about the risks, symptoms and official updates about swine flu is already nearly 10 times that sparked by the salmonella and peanut-butter scares earlier this year, according to data released yesterday by Nielsen Online.

Additional reporting by Reuven Fenton, Brigitte Williams-James, Austin Fenner, Andy Soltis, Amber Sutherland, Kavita Mokha, Brendan Scott, Amanda Melillo and Ikimulisa Livingston

dan.mangan@nypost.com