Vikings’ first-round pick Percy Harvin, who was absent from today’s opening day of rookie minicamp, is hospitalized in Atlanta because of the extreme dehydration that caused him to become sick in the Atlanta airport on Thursday. Harvin stopped there on layover as he traveled from Florida to Minneapolis.

Coach Brad Childress gave a report on Harvin’s situation during his news conference following today’s practice. Childress said that Harvin had been checked for Swine flu and the results came back negative. “I’m sure that with where we are at right now, when you vomit in the airport and are extremely sick, they were over the top, Childress said. “As far as paramedics coming and taking him in an ambulance. … He’s been hospitzlied with extreme dehyrdation and a virus.

“He started feeling ill on Wednesday and had a hard workout with their strength coach on Wednesday. But what I think, what I’m going to conjecture, our doctors have spoken extensively with those people down there. When you take, I think he was scheduled in talking to his dad, 14 or 15 trips on airplanes here in the last couple of weeks. Including two here, the one that he left from here on Sunday, when he came back, was delayed an hour-and-a-half here in Minneapolis. He got to Atlanta at midnight, missed a connection.

“They got in a car and drove to Jacksonville, got there at 7 o’clock in the morning. And he had three workouts the week that I was down there [last week]. I just think the grind had caught up with him. That’s what they are calling extreme dehydration probably exacerbated by that hard workout. It’s an unfortunate circumstance but it is what it is.”

Harvin is expected to be hospitalized for 24 to 48 hours and Childress said the plan will then be for him to return to Florida to recuperate. He will not take part in this weekend’s camp, which will feature two practices Saturday and a final practice Sunday.

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