A 34-year-old man from Brooklyn and a 41-year-old woman from Queens appear to be the latest victims of swine flu, according to the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene.
Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden said the two had "culture confirmed" cases of H1N1 flu but that autopsies were being performed to determine the exact cause of death.
Twenty private and public schools reopened in the city Tuesday, Frieden said, leaving 17 still closed. PS 811, a special education school in Queens, closed its doors Tuesday because of swine flu.
Frieden, speaking Tuesday at a news conference at the health department, said people coming to city emergency rooms complaining of flulike symptoms remained high, especially in Queens and in the Bronx.
Also Tuesday, IS 238 reopened its doors, nine days after the Hollis, Queens, middle school lost assistant principal Mitchell Wiener to swine flu.
School staff threw away the flowers and put away the candles and balloons left in Wiener's remembrance by the school's entrance and sign.
"We just want to move on and move forward the way Mr. Wiener would want us to," principal Joseph Gates said.
Some parents and students expressed concern about the school's safety from the illness as they continued to mourn Wiener, the city's first swine flu fatality.
"It's not going to be the same without him," said an eighth-grader, who recently received a flu shot in response to the outbreak. "I still think there are more people going to be sick at the school."
Darlene Brown, 43, said her son Michael, an eighth-grader, was still feeling sad about Wiener's death and was nervous about returning to school.
"I don't know how much of it is in the air, or how much the school's been cleaned," said Brown, a paralegal for a law firm in Great Neck.
Kassandra Armstead, 31, has two sons at the school - sixth-grader John, 13, and seventh-grader Melvin, 14.
Armstead dropped off John at school Tuesday morning but not Melvin.
"It's really crazy. John says he just wants school to be over with, while my other son won't even go back," Armstead said.
Shirmin Jahan, 35, was resigned to sending her son back to the school.
"It's all over Queens so you can't protect him," Jahan said. "These kids are going to be in the library, they're going to be in the park, they're going to be shopping. So we'll see what happens and pray to God that nothing does."
Students have returned to more than two dozen New York City public schools that were closed because of swine flu.
PS 19 in Corona was among the schools to reopen Tuesday. Schools Chancellor Joel Klein welcomed the children back.
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