WACO (April 28, 2009)—The Waco-McLennan County Health Department said Tuesday there are no confirmed and no likely swine flu cases in the county, but said surveillance and testing is ongoing.

Central Texas school districts are also monitoring the outbreak, and keeping a close eye on students for signs of illness.

Six cases have been confirmed in Texas, but 28 more probable cases were under investigation Tuesday.

The confirmed cases were in Guadalupe County and the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

Three probable case were reported in the DFW area; three probable cases were reported in the Houston area; seven probable cases were reported Guadalupe County, and 14 probable cases were reported in the Valley.

One of the victims who contracted the new flu strain was Cibolo High School senior Hayden Henshaw, who went to his doctor late last week suffering the classic achy, sniffly feverishness of a flu bug.

The 18-year-old was among the first confirmed cases of a new flu that combines bird, swine and human viruses.

He and two classmates at Steele High School were the earliest confirmed cases in Texas.

The teen's father, Patrick Henshaw said, "At first, we were scared to death because of what you were hearing."

But a week after the first symptoms, with the fever gone and just an occasional sniffle, "now, it's just nothing," said Hayden.

By Tuesday, he was mostly suffering from boredom with the family's self-imposed quarantine.

No one else in the family has gotten sick.

The Henshaws, including mom, Robin, and Hannah, 11, have been holed up in their two-story home in Cibolo, a San Antonio suburb, since Friday, just as a precaution and as a courtesy to others in their community, awaiting guidance from the state health department before calling off the quarantine.

Guadalupe County, where Cibolo sits, has asked residents to avoid public gatherings for the time being.

The local high school and others in the district were closed this week to disinfect and to try to eliminate any further transmission of the virus that has been relatively mild in the U.S. but has killed at least 150 people in Mexico.

Three other Texas school districts, in suburban Dallas, New Braunfels and Rio Grande City, have also closed because of confirmed or probable cases.

In all, 17 campuses have closed.

Starr County officials announced that all 13 schools in the Rio Grande City Consolidated Independent School District will be closed for the rest of the week as a precaution against the spread of swine flu.

This mostly rural county on the U.S.-Mexico border has no confirmed cases of swine flu, but is awaiting final test results on two "probable" cases.

Those two cases, both sixth-graders at Veterans Middle School, were enough to close that school Monday morning.

District Superintendent Roel Gonzalez said about 1,800 of the district's 10,214 students were absent Tuesday so the decision was made to close the schools for the rest of the week. Gonzalez said parents held out the students because of concerns about swine flu.

Nationwide, at least seven people were in U.S. hospitals with swine flu as the number of cases nationwide rose to 64 and a federal health official warned that deaths were likely.

Most of the nation's confirmed cases were in New York, where the city health commissioner said "many hundreds" of schoolchildren were ill at a school where several students had confirmed cases of swine flu.

Dr. Richard Besser, acting director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, noted that although ordinary human flu accounts for 36,000 deaths every year, he was concerned by this strain.

He said at an Atlanta news conference, "I fully expect we will see deaths from this infection."

He said he did not know about a newspaper report of two deaths in two southern California hospitals in which the victims appeared to have suffered from swine flu symptoms.

New York has the largest number of swine flu cases, with a heavy concentration at a Catholic school in Queens where students recently went on a spring break trip to Mexico.

Besser says at least five other people have been hospitalized in the U.S., including three in California and two in Texas.

The Los Angeles County coroner's office is investigating the recent deaths of two men for links to swine flu.

Los Angeles Coroner's spokesman Craig Harvey told the Los Angeles Times that a hospital in Bellflower reported the death of a 33-year-old Long Beach man who was brought in Saturday with symptoms resembling Swine flu.

The other death was a 45-year-old La Mirada man who died April 22 at a Norwalk hospital.

Coroner's Capt. John Kades said the bodies are being tested but that there has been no confirmation the disease killed them.

He offered no other details about the men.

Meanwhile, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has declared a state of emergency that will help California agencies coordinate efforts in response to the outbreak of swine flu.