Davis was an eighth grader at Harvey Austin School 97 on Sycamore Street.
News 4 talked to the 15-year-old’s mother Lucretia Belton. Matthew attended Harvey Austin School 97.

His mother said complications from swine flu included pneumonia and MRSA.
She said his kidneys were failing, and he was being kept alive by machines.
A nine-year-old girl is also at Women and Children’s Hospital with the H1N1 virus.
She’s a fourth grader at Charles Drew Science Magnet School 59’s museum campus.

The above comments describe two students of magnet schools in Buffalo, NY that are a mile apart (see updated map).  Both students were on life support yesterday, and the middle school student (15) died after life support was withdrawn.  The elementary school student (9F) remains on life support.  The clustering of two critically ill students raises concerns about the emergence of a more lethal strain of Pandemic H1N1.

The two serious cases may simply reflect the high level of H1N1 infections in the area.  37 Buffalo area zip codes have registered at least one confirmed H1N1 case (see map and list below).  Moreover adjacent Niagara County announced clusters of cases in two elementary schools, and clusters were also described for Hamilton Ontario, just across the border from Buffalo and Niagara county (see map).  Moreover, H1N1 has been widespread in the Halton area, where infections have been confirmed in more than 30 schools in Oakville.

However, the state agency and media reports do not describe any pre-existing conditions for either student and these two cases follow two announcements by the city of New York of 14 deaths in May.  Seven were announced on Tuesday, and seven more were announce on Friday, but these announcements lacked detail.  All had died in May and all were between the ages of 25-64.  However, there was no additional information and no mention of pre-existing conditions.

The significance of the failure to mention pre-existing remains unclear.  Many of the prior death were said to have pre-existing conditions, but there was little evidence pointing to a strong role of these conditions in the deaths.  In Mexico, most of the fatalities were in young adults who did not have pre-existing conditions.  Although reports of US cases have stated that 70% of fatalities had pre-existing conditions, it remains unclear if such figures include the 14 cases announced by NYC or other cases that have been confirmed but not announced.

Source/Full Story: recombinomics.com

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