Kali­fa Clyne

There have been 29 lab-con­firmed cas­es of the H1N1 in­fluen­za (swine flu) in this coun­try so far for 2015, with three re­sult­ing in death.

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh, yes­ter­day, shared this in­for­ma­tion in an at­tempt to clear the air on what he said was "mis­in­for­ma­tion" in the pub­lic sphere.

Deyals­ingh held the first of what is to be a week­ly me­dia con­fer­ence on health is­sues at the min­istry's Park Street, Port-of-Spain, head of­fice, yes­ter­day morn­ing.

"We are not in a cri­sis as far as H1N1 is con­cerned," Deyals­ingh said.

He said two of the three deaths were as a re­sult of pa­tients with co-mor­bidi­ties such as di­a­betes.

The oth­er death was a pa­tient who had a kid­ney trans­plant and whose im­mu­ni­ty had been se­vere­ly com­pro­mised.

He de­fined the at-risk groups for the virus as health­care work­ers, chil­dren, preg­nant women and the el­der­ly.

He said de­spite these be­ing the at-risk groups, the ma­jor­i­ty of con­firmed cas­es were peo­ple be­tween the ages of 20 and 64.

The cas­es have been found in St George West, St An­drew, St David and Na­pari­ma/ Ma­yaro.

Deyals­ingh al­so com­ment­ed on the front page sto­ry of a dai­ly news­pa­per to­day which re­port­ed an H1N1 scare at the San­gre Grande hos­pi­tal.

The re­port said nurs­es and pa­tients were scared, with some pa­tients dis­charg­ing them­selves from the hos­pi­tal to avoid con­tact with the man ru­moured to have the virus.

The San­gre Grande hos­pi­tal has no iso­la­tion area.

Deyals­ingh de­nied that the case in San­gre Grande had been con­firmed as an H1N1 case and said the di­ag­no­sis so far was vi­ral pneu­mo­nia.

He said work­ers were giv­en full PPE gear to wear and had been pro­vid­ed with vac­cines.

"The prob­lem is that not all health­care work­ers are will­ing to take the vac­cines."

Asked why health­care work­ers were re­fus­ing the vac­cine, Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Dr Clive Tilluck­d­har­ry said he did not know.

He gave as­sur­ances that there were enough vac­cines and an­tivi­ral treat­ments for the at-risk groups in the coun­try.

The min­istry had pro­cured 20,000 dos­es of vac­cine but 80 per cent have been used.

The coun­try cur­rent­ly has 3,500 adult vac­cines and 4,000 chil­dren vac­cines.

The min­istry has al­so placed an or­der with the Pan Amer­i­can Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion for 20,000 ad­di­tion­al vac­cines.

Deyals­ingh al­so cau­tioned par­ents of asth­mat­ic chil­dren or any­one tak­ing steroid treat­ments to vis­it their near­est health cen­tre to ac­cess the vac­cine as these peo­ple fell with­in the at-risk groups. Steroids re­duce the ac­tiv­i­ty of the im­mune sys­tem.

Flash­back

In Oc­to­ber, for­mer health min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan called on cit­i­zens to be cau­tious as there was a resur­gence of the virus in In­dia and parts of South Asia, which share close ties with T&T.

He not­ed the 2009 pan­dem­ic in which 14,286 con­firmed deaths were re­port­ed and called on lo­cal au­thor­i­ties to put the prop­er mea­sures in place.

Khan's call fol­lowed the death of a Siparia woman, Cher­rie Ryce, that same month as a re­sult of H1N1 at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

The death was brought to the at­ten­tion of the me­dia by con­cerned rel­a­tives.

In Oc­to­ber, the Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency said it had re­ceived 284 sam­ples for in­fluen­za virus test­ing, of which 47 test­ed pos­i­tive while 14 were typed as In­fluen­za-A H1N1.