The death toll from the global swine flu breakout continues to rise, including the first known fatality in the United States. Earlier today, government officials said a twenty-three-month-old child died in Texas. It was the first swine flu death reported outside Mexico, where seven people have died in confirmed cases and another 159 in suspected cases. On Tuesday, the World Health Organization said a global pandemic is a “very serious possibility” but not inevitable. World Health Organization Assistant Director Keiji Fukuda said confirmed infections continue to rise.

Keiji Fukuda: “Since yesterday, there has continued to be an increase in laboratory confirmed cases of these swine flu influenza infections. So, yesterday we reported that there were seventy-three infections, and today we are reporting that there are seventy-nine laboratory confirmed infections, as of the information that we had this morning.”

The US has at least sixty-five confirmed cases, forty-five of them in New York. In California, Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger declared a statewide emergency after authorities said they had confirmed thirteen cases.

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger: “Today I’m issuing an emergency proclamation to strengthen California’s response. And what this basically does is it gives us some extra tools for our health authorities in order to respond very quickly, and it also cuts through the red tape so that all state agencies will have to go and assist the Department of Public Health in every way possible.”

President Obama has asked Congress for $1.5 billion in supplemental funding to address the swine flu crisis.