Administration staffer may have contracted swine flu

The White House said Thursday that a member of
the secretary of energy’s advance security team might have contracted the H1N1
flu, or swine flu, while in Mexico on the president’s trip earlier this month.

The man traveled with President Obama’s staff to Mexico City on April 16, but
White House press secretary Robert Gibbs repeated his insistence that the
president has shown no symptoms of the flu. Gibbs said Energy Secretary Steven
Chu also had not demonstrated any symptoms.

{mosads}”If you haven’t felt any symptoms, then there’s no need to test you,”
Gibbs said.

The security agent, who lives in suburban Maryland, might have passed on the
potentially fatal flu to his wife and young son. Gibbs said members of the
man’s family tested positive for type-A influenza.

Gibbs said that given the passage of time and the relatively short period of
time of incubation of the flu, it is “highly, highly unlikely” that
anyone else who made the trip contracted the flu.