Biden, Besser remain against border closing idea

[April 30, 2009]  WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Obama administration stood solidly against closing the U.S.-Mexico border Thursday, with Vice President Joe Biden calling this health emergency option "a monumental undertaking" with only limited benefits now that the swine flu virus already has penetrated many states and forced roughly a hundred school closures.

Biden and Dr. Richard Besser, acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, reinforced the government's stance on a border closing a day after President Barack Obama ruled it out during a prime time televised news conference, saying such a step would be tantamount to "closing the barn door after the horses are out."

Biden told interviewers on the morning network news shows he sympathizes with parents worried about the spread of the disease in this country, but said that shutting down America's borders would be far more complicated -- and would carry potentially great consequences -- than simpler steps like closing schools and canceling or postponing public meetings.

Biden also reiterated on Thursday the advice the administration has been eagerly dispensing: "A parent whose child's school is closed out of a precaution or because there's been a confirmed case of flu should not take child then to a day care center. They're going to have to take them home."

"And the hope is that the employers will be generous in terms of how they treat that employee's necessary action of taking that child home and not being at work," he said.

Besser earlier reported confirmed swine flu cases in 10 states, including 51 in New York, 16 in Texas and 14 in California. The CDC counted scattered cases in Kansas, Massachusetts, Michigan, Arizona, Indiana, Nevada and Ohio. State officials in Maine said laboratory tests had confirmed three cases in that state, not yet included in the CDC count.

Scores of schools were closed around the country and more might need to be shut down temporarily, triggering a chain reaction as parents left without child care can't report to work. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano urged U.S. businesses to figure out who can telecommute and to take other steps to keep operations going for what promises to be a long period of uncertainty.

Besser on Thursday said, "It is time for people to pay attention, for people to do planning and to understand what they can do to prevent the infection."

"This is a period of great uncertainty," he acknowledged. "It's a situation that is evolving rapidly and we are trying to study the impact of school closures on control of this as they're taking place." Besser said officials want to ensure that "school closure is in fact decreasing risk of spread in a community and not taking children who would have been at school and sending them out to malls and other places."

He was asked why the administration has not turned to the option of thermal sensors to detect people suffering from a fever at the border with Mexico. Besser replied that public health officials do not consider them very effective, "especially for an inspection where you are able to transmit if you're infected the day before you have symptoms."

[Associated Press; By LAURAN NEERGAARD]

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