Edgar Hernandez

Mexico The cracks opened up by the flu As the swine-flu outbreak appears to subside, Mexico is left to contemplate the cost and to ponder the authorities’ response AFTER almost a fortnight of high alert and a five-day shutdown of ghostly calm, Mexico City this week began gingerly to return to its normal metropolitan bustle. Fears that swine flu might be a deadly epidemic have subsided: testing has shown that it was responsible for fewer than 50 of the 159 deaths that it was reported to have caused in Mexico. So far it seems to be barely more contagious than normal influenza, and is ... Read Full Story

A state in eastern Mexico is to erect a statue to a small boy suspected as being the first patient of swine flu here, to be modeled on the famous Manneken Pis statue of a child urinating in Brussels. Five-year-old Edgar Hernandez appeared in media across the world after the health ministry in April confirmed that he had contracted, and overcome, the A(H1N1) virus at the start of the epidemic's outbreak here. Hernandez's role in putting his poor village of La Gloria on the map merited recognition in the shape of a small statue -- resembling the famous Belgian landmark -- Fidel Herrera Beltran, ... Read Full Story

Meet the child known as “patient zero” by his doctors — 5-year-old Edgar Hernandez, who survived the earliest documented case of swine flu in an outbreak that, officials say, has now spread across four continents. His family lives in the 3,000-population village of La Gloria in the state of Veracruz, where a flu outbreak was reported on April 2. State officials arrived and tested dozens of people. Lab tests confirmed that Edgar was the only patient in Veracruz to test positive for the swine flu virus; the others had contracted a common flu. Health officials had returned to Edgar’s sample only after cases of ... Read Full Story

  New, fretful, confusing reports from the California border indicates that the A/H1N1 virus was in California before five year-old Edgar Hernandez fell ill on April 2 in La Gloria, Veracruz state. California epidemiologists have located two cases of children in Southern California, a ten year-old boy in San Diego County and a nine year-old glrl in neighboring Imperial County, who fell ill before Edgar Hernandez. The boy on March 30; the girl on April 1. Both have tested positive for A/H1N1. Neither are known to have had contact with swine. The new theory is that this killer flu has been circulating for months ... Read Full Story

A Mexican sculptor is putting the finishing touches on a bronze statue of a 5-year-old boy who became Mexico's earliest confirmed case of swine flu. Veracruz state spokesman Jorge Brandy says the statue of Edgar Hernandez will be erected in the central park of La Gloria, a pig-farming village in the mountains where scientists trying to learn where the epidemic began are taking blood samples from residents and pigs. Brandy says the statue of Hernandez, who recovered from the illness after taking antibiotics, is meant to serve as a symbol of hope. The outbreak has killed more than 90 people worldwide but Mexican health ... Read Full Story