The administration sent top health and homeland security officials out for televised briefings Monday on what was being done - and promised they'd keep coming back until the situation settled down. And Obama inserted his own assurances in a previously scheduled speech, knowing the TV networks were waiting for his comments.
Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said the government was preparing as if the outbreak would become the pandemic many fear, dispatching people and equipment to affected areas and stepping up information-sharing at all levels of government and with other nations. And checking people at the borders and airports, though not stopping them.
Richard Besser, the acting director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, said his agency was aggressively investigating, looking for evidence of the disease spreading and probing for ways to control and prevent it.
Both were asked what worried Americans should do?
Use common sense, they said reassuringly. Wash your hands. Stay home from work or school if you're sick.
The government also issued an advisory warning travelers to cancel any nonessential visits to Mexico.
At the White House, a swine flu update was added to the president's daily intelligence briefing, delivered by White House homeland security adviser John Brennan.
On Capitol Hill, several panels scheduled emergency hearings for later this week.
Obama, in his speech to a meeting of scientists, said his administration was "closely monitoring" the situation.
"This is, obviously, a cause for concern and requires a heightened state of alert," he said. "But it's not a cause for alarm."
The White House defended the administration's ability to respond to a crisis that is coming so early in its tenure and while it still lacks a health and human services secretary, a surgeon general and a CDC director. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs took pains to note that a long-standing presidential directive gives the homeland security secretary - not the health chief - the authority to coordinate federal action in such situations.
"Our response is in no way hindered or hampered," Gibbs said.
The White House also aimed to sidestep a potentially problematic diplomatic headache. Gibbs declined to discuss whether Obama officials have any concern about when Mexico notified the U.S. of the outbreak - particularly significant given the president's trip to Mexico on April 16 and 17.
The first case of swine flu was reported in Mexico three days before Obama's arrival.
The White House said Monday that its medical unit asked if Mexican health officials and U.S. embassy medical staff had any concerns about infectious disease and were told they did not. But a White House statement said, "We have no reason to believe they withheld any information they had at the time."
Gibbs also stressed that the president's doctors have no concern about his health now. Obama has not been tested or given any pre-emptive treatment, in part because to do so could encourage others without symptoms to flood the nation's health system, Gibbs said.
The presidential spokesman also had no information about the administration's response to the European Union's top health official, who warned Europeans to postpone nonessential travel to parts of the United States and Mexico because of the swine flu virus.
Gibbs did have ready at his daily briefing with reporters a lengthy summary of what he said was Obama's deep involvement as a senator, starting in 2005 in response to bird flu fears, in efforts to increase funding to improve preparedness for a pandemic.
Meanwhile, administration officials inventoried the White House's stockpiles of the flu-treating drugs Tamiflu and Relenza procured during the Bush administration for the president and his staff. A public health source who spoke on condition of anonymity to more freely discuss internal preparations said the Obama White House was checking its supplies of the drugs to make sure they knew where the doses are stored and whether they are still fresh and in ample number.
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