By Stephen Smith, Globe Staff A dozen more cases of swine flu have been confirmed in Massachusetts, public health authorities announced this morning,

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - The new H1N1 flu killed its first patient in Canada, making it the third country after Mexico and the United States to report a death from the virus that has sickened more than 3,000 people in 27 countries.

Alberta's chief medical officer said on Friday that the woman in her 30s who died on April 28 had not traveled to Mexico, the epicenter of the swine flu outbreak, which suggests a more sustained spread of the infection.

Her death raised the confirmed global death toll to 48 from the virus, a strange coupling between a triple-hybrid virus with pig, human and bird elements and a European swine virus not seen before in North America.

Alberta was also where a herd of pigs became infected with the H1N1 swine flu, apparently infected by a man who had traveled to Mexico.

The World Health Organization kept its global pandemic alert at 5 out of 6 because the new virus was not spreading rapidly outside North America, where U.S. officials expect it to spread to all 50 states.

Japan reported its first three confirmed cases, a man in his 40s and two teenagers who had spent time in Canada. Italy also reported the first case of the H1N1 flu strain transmitted within the country -- a 70-year-old man in Rome caught the virus from his grandson, who returned from a holiday in Mexico.

In Mexico, authorities reported one more death, based on lab tests of patients who died in days past, to raise the total to 45. A quarter of the dead were obese, the government said.

The virus has also killed two people in the United States, where President Barack Obama said, "... we're seeing that the virus may not have been as virulent as we at first feared but we're not out of the woods yet."

Researchers have yet to determine where it originated.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported 1,639 U.S. cases on Friday, up from 896 on Thursday, a jump that has been expected as a backlog of lab tests were confirmed. The Mexican case total climbed to 1,364 from 1,204.

That pushed the global figures to at least 3,413 cases, according to the WHO, the CDC and national health authorities.

But U.S. health officials were encouraged that more people were washing their hands as a result of the outbreak.

MEXICAN ECONOMY IMPACTED

Swine flu briefly rattled financial markets after Mexico announced it had detected a new virus on April 23, and it temporarily depressed hog futures after several countries imposed trade restrictions, which came even though health officials said there was no risk of spreading the virus by eating pork.

Mexico, already in recession, has said the flu crisis could knock 0.3 to 0.5 percentage points off gross domestic product as tourism revenues suffer and after the country shut down all non-essential businesses for five days to control infection. Continued...