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Paterson Declares State of Emergency Over Swine Flu

By DNAinfo Staff on October 29, 2009 1:32pm

Gov. David Paterson on Thursday declared a state of emergency in New York over an alleged increase in swine flu cases.

Paterson’s executive order said that there have been at least 75 swine flu deaths in New York State, according to the Associated Press.

The order also allows additional health care professionals, including dentists, to administer vaccines, and calls for twice as many doses to be dispensed in New York, the AP reported.

Paterson made his declaration after the federal government had already made moves to ramp up the availability of H1N1 vaccines.

President Barack Obama had proclaimed swine flu as a national state of emergency on Saturday.

Meanwhile, fewer than half of parents of students in New York City schools have given permission for their children to get the vaccine, the New York Times reported.

While the city Health Dept. didn't have specific numbers, the paper said they estimated it was between 5 and 50 percent of parents who had not granted consent.

“The swine flu vaccine has not been out long enough for me to trust it,” parent Sheena Ash, who has three children at Public School 157 in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn, told the Times. “They have never gotten a flu shot, and they’ve never gotten the flu.”