While the Mexican government has already identified "Patient Zero" in the swine flu outbreak, they've now identified the first person to die in the outbreak, and it seems this person may in fact have been a modern-day Typhoid Mary.
Maria Adela Gutierrez was admitted to a local hospital on 8 April and died five days later. Worse, she was a census-taker in the southern tourist city of Oaxaca.
Reports are that Gutierrez's census-taker job means she had face-to-face contact with at least 300 people, at a time when the disease was at its most transmittable.
However, it's unclear if Maria Adela Gutierrez in fact infected anyone with swine flu, and it will probably never be clear.
Mexican Health Secretary Jose Angel Cordova said:
"We never had this type of epidemic, this type of virus in the world. We don't know how many days this will go on, because it's the first time in the world this virus has appeared."
At the same time, cases in the U.S. have jumped to nearly 100, and the first confirmed death from swine flu has been reported: a 23-month-old toddler in TX.
As reference, the original Typhoid Mary, Mary Mallon, was an Irish chef who was identified as the first person in the US to be a carrier of typhoid fever. It is believed she infected 53 people, of whom three died.
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