Health officials raised the alarm about a strain of swine flu that is resistant to the Tamiflu treatment as the virus claimed more lives yesterday, with Vietnam reporting its first fatal case.
India and South Africa both reported their first deadly cases of the A(H1N1) virus late on Monday.
Maria Teresa Cerqueira, head of the Pan-American Health Organization office in La Jolla, California, said a Tamiflu-resistant mutation of A(H1N1) had been found around the US-Mexico border in El Paso and close to McAllen, Texas.
Experts had gathered in La Jolla, California, on Monday to discuss responses to the outbreak, and warned that resistant strains were likely emerging because of overuse of antivirals like Tamiflu.
“In the US Tamiflu is sold with a prescription, but in Mexico and Canada it is sold freely and taken at the first sneeze. Then, when it is really needed, it doesn’t work,” Cerqueira said late on Monday.
Cases of A(H1N1) that were resistant to the anti-viral medicine have now been found in the US, Canada, Denmark, Hong Kong and Japan.
In Vietnam, officials reported the country’s first swine flu fatality after a 29-year-old woman died from the disease in the southern coastal province of Khanh Hoa.
Nearly 1,000 people have reportedly been infected in Vietnam and about 500 of those are receiving hospital treatment, according to the health ministry.
In South Africa, authorities said a 22-year-old student at Stellenbosch University near Cape Town had died after contracting the virus, while in India a 14-year-old girl in the western city of Pune died.
With the world’s highest number of HIV/AIDS-affected people — nearly 19 percent of a population of 49 million — South Africa is considered particularly at risk because people with compromised immunity are more likely to fall prey to the disease.
South Africa’s swine flu caseload has increased fourfold since the country’s first case was reported on June 14.
In India, the government said that 2,479 people had been tested for swine flu so far out of whom 558 had tested positive for (A)H1N1.
The virus continued to disrupt plans for public events.
The Russian state health agency warned football fans to stay away from the national team’s World Cup qualifying tie with Wales in Cardiff on Sept. 9.
“This would be an extremely unnecessary and inappropriate undertaking at a time of a flu epidemic,” local news agencies quoted Russian Health Minister Gennady Onishchenko as saying.
Onishchenko expressed fears that “the expressions of emotion on the part of football fans involving intense shouting” could lead to the airborne transmission of the flu virus.
Russia has to-date been relatively unscathed by the pandemic, with just 55 confirmed cases.
In China, the government decided to cancel summer camps in affected areas after recent outbreaks sickened children, parents and teachers, state media said yesterday.
China has reported a total of 2,152 cases of swine flu, but no deaths so far, the paper said.
Experts remain puzzled as to why different countries have not always been affected to the same degree, with Britain and Scotland both heavily hit proportionately, yet France’s tally appearing light by comparison.
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