Two more flu cases confirmed in SD County

Two Camp Pendleton Marines have contracted swine flu, which brings the total number of cases in San Diego County Friday to 10.

The service members are isolated and are being treated as “outpatients,’’ according to a statement released by the U.S. Marine Corps late Thursday night.

In addition to the 10 confirmed cases, tests are pending for about a dozen other people in San Diego suspected of having the virus, which officials are now calling by its scientific name--H1N1--to avoid wrongly suggesting that eating pork risks exposure to the disease.

Other than the two Camp Pendleton Marines, confirmed cases have involved a 10-year-old boy, a 54-year-old man and his 16-year-old daughter, a 7-year-old boy, a 20-year-old man, a 3-year-old boy, a 38-year-old man and a 23-year-old man.

None of those infected in the county have been hospitalized, said Dr. Wilma Wooten, the county’s public health officer.

According to Wooten, the state will start processing tests of suspected swine flu cases today so county health officials will no longer have to send samples to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta.

“We expect to get a much faster turnaround time with state testing,’’ she said.

So far, there are slightly more than 100 cases of swine flu confirmed in the United States, according to the CDC. The nation’s first and only swine-flu death--a 23-month-old girl from Mexico--was reported in Texas Wednesday morning. Hours later, the World Health Organization issued a statement saying an international health emergency was “imminent.’’

On Thursday, the WHO announced it would no longer be using the term “swine flu’’ a day after Egypt began slaughtering thousands of pigs in a misguided effort to prevent spread of the virus.

Though the virus originated in pigs, the WHO and the CDC agree that the virus is now being passed from human to human and has nothing to do with swine..