As the swine flu death toll in Mexico rose to 149 yesterday (with 2,000 hospitalized), for the first time ever the World Health Organization raised its global epidemic threat level to Phase IV. That's two phases below a full blown pandemic, and the alert means there is sustained human-to-human transmission, with containment is no longer possible.

In New York, the number of confirmed cases at St. Francis prep in Fresh Meadows increased to 28, and doctors estimate that as many as 200 people linked to the school probably have the swine flu. President Obama told reporters yesterday, "This is obviously a cause for concern, but it's not a cause for alarm." And Mayor Bloomberg again urged everyone to stay calm, saying, "There's an important number for New Yorkers to keep in mind, and that number is one. We have one reported cluster of swine flu at one school."

Except now health officials are looking into possible swine flu cases at P.S. 177 in Fresh Meadows, not far from St. Francis Prep! And there's another cluster, or perhaps the start of a cluster, in the heart of Times Square, where an employee at Ernst & Young has come down with the swine flu. Time to panic and exterminate all the pigs? One store in Flushing, Queens, has already reported a run on surgical masks, and in Israel the government officially renamed it "Mexico flu" because pigs aren't kosher. But some media watchdogs say the press is blowing this out of proportion—one journalism professor points out the obvious to the Washington Post: "If you scare people, they'll tune in more."

Still, it's big news when the federal government is bracing for "a full pandemic." No deaths have been reported in the U.S. yet, and in most cases the illness is so mild most patients just need bed rest to recover. But 17-year-old St. Francis senior Sophia Goumakos tells the Post the swine flu has really ruined her on-the-go lifestyle: "I couldn't text anyone. I couldn't watch TV." And the Times takes a close look at the students' fateful spring break trip to Cancun that brought pestilence to our shores, while the Post checks in on another St. Francis teen fighting a 101 degree fever. Her mom says, "My daughter on Friday asked me if she was going to die because of Mexico... She can't pick her head up. It's scary." Not to be outdone, the Daily News spends time with an entire swine flu family in Queens.