US confirms first Flu death as Europe confirms new cases

Three more cases of swine flu have been confirmed in Britain, the Prime Minister has revealed, including a 12-year-old girl.

The school the girl attends in Torbay has been shut temporarily and all pupils offered antiviral drugs, he told MPs.

Mr Brown said the other new cases were adults, from Birmingham and London.

All three had recently travelled to Mexico, had mild symptoms and were responding well to treatment, he said

The swine flu epidemic has claimed its first victim in the US - a 23-month-old child who died in Texas.

It is also the first death from swine flu reported outside Mexico, the country hardest hit by the outbreak.

No other details of the US case are known. Officials have confirmed 65 cases in America so far, most of them mild.

Germany has confirmed three cases of swine flu - the most in Europe.

The victims include two women, aged 22 and 37, and a man in his 30s. All had recently returned from Mexico.

Germany is the third European country to confirm cases of swine flu, after Spain and the UK, which have declared two each.

Others are investigating suspected cases, but so far Mexico - the apparent source of the outbreak - is the only country where victims have died.

German authorities say there is no need to panic - and that they have sufficient stocks of anti-flu drugs to protect the population, says the BBC's Tristana Moore in Berlin.

But the country is bracing for more cases and is increasing its watchfulness at airports like Hamburg and Frankfurt.