MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The new H1N1 flu virus is infecting fewer people in Mexico and will likely cause no more than 100 deaths in the country, Health Minister Jose Angel Cordova said on Wednesday.
Cordova told Reuters that Mexican hospitals were seeing a drop in cases of the virus, also known as swine flu, in recent days.
"Fortunately this was not the very serious epidemic that we were expecting," he said in an interview.
Mexico has confirmed 60 deaths from the virus, which has spread throughout the world, and additional fatalities could come from people already in serious condition in hospital.
"People are arriving earlier to treatment, fewer people are coming in serious condition, there have been fewer cases coming into the hospital and fewer deaths," he said.
Close to 30 percent of those who died in Mexico were suffering diabetes or complications from obesity, he said.
(Reporting by Mica Rosenberg and Miguel Angel Gutierrez, editing by Jackie Frank)
