May 15 (Bloomberg) -- A school administrator became New York City’s first seriously ill swine flu patient as the virus spread to 35 countries and Ecuador confirmed its first case.

Global health authorities today received new information in Geneva that may lead within days to a recommendation that drugmakers plan to mass produce a vaccine for the new H1N1 influenza.

Swine flu has been responsible for 70 deaths and more than 7,500 illnesses worldwide since last month, when health officials recognized its outbreak. Mexico, where most of the deaths occurred, risks losing billions of dollars because travelers are staying away, Tourism Minister Rodolfo Elizondo said yesterday. New York City closed three public schools for at least five school days because of “unusually high levels” of flu-like illness, Mayor Michael Bloomberg said.

“I know that many will find this information troubling, but information I’ve always thought is the best antidote to anxiety and we will continue to provide New Yorkers with clear, accurate and timely information as we have it,” Bloomberg said last night at a City Hall news conference, where he was joined by Governor David Paterson and city schools Chancellor Joel Klein. “By taking common-sense precautions and not by overreacting we will get through this together.”

The male assistant principal at Intermediate School 238 in Jamaica, in the city borough of Queens, where more than 50 students have been sent home ill, may have had a pre-existing condition that worsened his illness, Bloomberg said.

More Dangerous

The World Health Organization said the H1N1 virus is more dangerous than the germs that cause seasonal epidemics, which kill 250,000 to 500,000 people each year. The Geneva-based agency’s influenza alert is at one step below a pandemic, which was last triggered in 1968.

A South Texas man who died last week became the fourth swine flu death in the U.S., the Texas Department of State Health Services reported today on its Web site. The man, in his 30s, had underlying medical conditions, the department said.

Ecuador’s health officials said today a 12-year-old boy who arrived home May 10 from the U.S. is the country’s first case of the H1N1 illness. Peru yesterday confirmed its first case of the disease, a 27-year-old woman who traveled to her Lima home from New York, Health Minister Oscar Ugarte said. The number of confirmed cases globally jumped to 7,520 today from 6,497 yesterday, with most of the increase coming in the U.S., the WHO said.

New Zealand Cases

New Zealand, which reported the Asia-Pacific region’s first case of H1N1, said today it raised the number of people confirmed as having swine flu to nine from seven, and treated 10 others as probably having the infection. All confirmed and probable cases have fully recovered, Mark Jacobs, director of public health, said in a statement.

Some experts said they expect the virus to recede in the Northern Hemisphere until at least October. It may return in a more dangerous form after potentially circulating in the Southern Hemisphere, which is beginning its flu season, said William Schaffner, an infectious disease specialist at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee, who advises the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Drugmakers have been waiting for data on the impact of the flu on society, particularly on young adults considered in the most economically productive age groups, to help determine the priority for producing an inoculation, said Gregory Hartl, a WHO spokesman.

Panel Reviews

Two expert committees advising the United Nations agency began reviewing information today on the impact and severity of the new H1N1 virus, as well as production capacity and the public health benefit of an inoculation, said Marie-Paule Kieny, director of the WHO’s initiative on vaccine research. A recommendation by the panels to make a vaccine would be considered by Margaret Chan, WHO’s director-general, Kieny said today in an interview.

The U.K., France, Belgium and Finland agreed to buy about 158 million shots from London-based GlaxoSmithKline Plc and Baxter International Inc. of Deerfield, Illinois, according to statements today from Glaxo and the U.K. government.

“Scientists tell us that as yet we don’t know enough about this novel strain, or whether it’s likely to mutate, but that this virus has the potential to become a pandemic and we can’t predict how serious that would be,” U.K. Secretary of State Alan Johnson said today in a statement. “We have an opportunity to secure vaccine in advance of a pandemic wave.”

Time to Prepare

The majority of flu vaccine manufacturers, which produce the shot using chicken eggs, won’t be able to start mass production for a “few weeks” when seed vaccines will be available, Kieny said.

“They are not ready to start large scale manufacturing tomorrow,” she said.

The WHO said the virus “appears to be more contagious” than seasonal flu, and a study in the May 11 journal Science estimates the virus is as severe as the 1957 Asian flu pandemic that caused about 2 million deaths.

H1N1 has sickened 4,714 in the U.S., according to the Atlanta-based CDC, and 2,656 people have been infected in Mexico, the country’s health ministry reported.

The Mexican tourism minister, Elizondo, said yesterday his government should pressure the CDC to lift its warning on nonessential travel to Mexico by the end of June for the summer tourist season. The U.S. now has more cases of swine flu than Mexico, reducing the usefulness of the CDC’s warning, he said.

CDC Response

The CDC may downgrade its warning to avoid non-essential travel to Mexico, Martin Cetron, the CDC’s director of the global migration and quarantine division, said today in a conference call. The “warning” may be changed to a “precaution, and the agency still would recommend people who are at high risk for complications from the flu talk to their doctor before traveling, he said.

The rates of flu infection are unusual at this time of the year, said Daniel Jernigan, deputy director of the CDC’s influenza division. Based on reported cases of flu-like symptoms, Jernigan estimated that 100,000 people may be sick in the U.S.

“There are 22 states that are reporting widespread or regional influenza activity, which is something we would not expect at this time,” Jernigan said.

Of the swine flu patients in Mexico and the U.S., 9 percent to 10 percent require hospitalization, Nikki Shindo, a medical officer with the WHO’s influenza program, said May 12.

‘Clearly Different’

“This is clearly different from what we see from seasonal influenza, that is for sure,” Shindo said. Preliminary patient data “rightly urges the development and delivery of pandemic influenza vaccines,” she said.

New York City was the center of the first U.S. outbreak last month, with about 45 cases at St. Francis Preparatory School in Queens. The outbreak appeared to be triggered by students who had traveled to Mexico on a school break, city health authorities said. Officials said May 1 they won’t test for swine flu except in the most seriously ill patients because most of the New York cases were less severe than seasonal flu.

In addition to IS 238, or the Susan B. Anthony School, the schools shut yesterday in New York were Public School 16Q in Corona, Queens, where 29 students were documented with flu-like symptoms, and IS 5Q, the Walter Crowley Intermediate School in Elmhurst, Queens, where 241 students were reported absent.

A total of 4,500 students attend the three schools. The earliest date the schools may reopen is May 22 under the order put in place after health officials discovered the influenza symptoms. Bloomberg said swine flu has been documented in the assistant principal and four students.

The mayor is founder and majority owner of Bloomberg News parent Bloomberg LP.

To contact the reporters on this story: Henry Goldman in New York at hgoldman@bloomberg.net; Jason Gale in Geneva at j.gale@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: May 15, 2009 16:08 EDT