With the swine flu outbreak closing down a handful of schools and claiming its first local victim, Mayor Bloomberg wasted no time in naming Dr. Thomas Farley as the new commissioner of the health department. Farley will begin on June 8th once Thomas Frieden takes over his new post heading up the CDC. Farley was a safe and expected choice as an epidemics expert who has advised Frieden and may have also won over the mayor's (low in cholesterol) heart with his aggressive stance against obesity. The Daily News says Farley recently ran into some controversy with "a memo to Frieden noting an increase in syphilis and HIV infection among gay men and suggesting the city 'reevaluate' its policies on gay bathhouses and other venues where men have sex with men." As for the swine flu situation, a twelfth school has shut its doors because so many students were sick. However, Upper East Side St. David's, a Catholic school for boys, closed voluntarily with the mayor saying, "They chose to close, we did not recommend they close." more ›

Word is that infectious disease specialist Dr. Thomas Farley is set to become the city's new health commissioner. In recent years, Farley was a senior adviser to Dr. Thomas Frieden, who has left his post in order to head up the Center for Disease Control. The mayor is expected to make the announcement tomorrow. On Friday, Bloomberg said, "I didn't want this city, particularly at a time when you have H1N1 on people's minds, to go without a health commissioner." Currently six city schools are closed due to swine flu. Farley, the current chairman of the Tulane School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, co-authored a paper with Frieden titled “Public Health in New York City, 2002-2007: Confronting Epidemics of the Modern Era." Former health official told the Times, “Tom Farley is a really top-notch epidemiologist and a really, really well-respected public health official. He has a lot of interest in addressing the issues that are causing people to have poor health.” more ›

Update, 1:20 p.m.: The Obama administration has declared a "public health emergency" with further cases of swine flu expected to emerge. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano called the declaration of a public health emergency "standard operating procedure." more ›