Kali­fa Clyne

Of the 29 lab-con­firmed H1N1 pa­tients in T&T, 25 have been treat­ed by doc­tors and dis­charged.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Chief Med­ical Of­fi­cer Clive Tilluck­d­har­ry said the chances of a nor­mal healthy per­son get­ting the H1N1 virus was low and got even low­er for fa­tal­i­ties.

"We have about 4,000 cas­es of the flu every year. For this year, so far, 29 cas­es have been lab-con­firmed as H1N1."

Tilluck­d­har­ry said those peo­ple were treat­ed by their doc­tors and were back to good health.

"They are home. These are the lab sam­ples be­ing sent from var­i­ous doc­tors and they were treat­ed," he added.

Of the 29 lab-con­firmed cas­es, the ma­jor­i­ty had co-mor­bid­i­tys, mean­ing pre-ex­ist­ing con­di­tions, such as di­a­betes, can­cer and oth­er chron­ic ill­ness­es, which af­fect the im­mune sys­tem

"Of that group, one in four or five peo­ple will get symp­toms, less than two per cent will be hos­pi­talised. He said the sta­tis­tics were sim­i­lar to dengue fever even though the virus­es were fun­da­men­tal­ly dif­fer­ent as H1N1 at­tacks the res­pi­ra­to­ry sys­tem.

"Peo­ple won't al­ways know they have it. It would start off like a nor­mal flu and what they would need to do as with any flu is to drink lots of liq­uids, rest and take the ap­pro­pri­ate flu med­ica­tion."

He en­cour­aged peo­ple in the at-risk groups, med­ical work­ers, the el­der­ly, chil­dren and preg­nant women, to get vac­ci­nat­ed.

Asked about the skep­ti­cism shown by nurs­es to­ward the vac­cine, Tilluck­d­har­ry said he couldn't ex­plain it.

"I, my­self took the vac­cine so I don't know what the prob­lem is," he said.

On Fri­day, Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh had said three peo­ple had died from the virus.

Yes­ter­day Med­ical Chief of Staff at the Er­ic Williams Med­ical Sci­ences Com­plex, Dr Andy Bhag­wan­dass, re­vealed that a fourth per­son, Sta­cy Ramkissoon, 28, was con­firmed of hav­ing H1N1 but a post-mortem sched­uled for to­day would re­veal her of­fi­cial cause of death.

Ramkissoon who de­liv­ered a ba­by via a Cae­saraean sec­tion died on Sat­ur­day at the health in­sti­tu­tion.

In a re­lease yes­ter­day, the Min­istry of Health re­mind­ed cit­i­zens that in­fluen­za could cause se­vere ill­ness in some peo­ple, in­clud­ing the el­der­ly, in­fants, young chil­dren and preg­nant women as well as those with chron­ic med­ical con­di­tions, such as heart, lung, kid­ney dis­ease and di­a­betes.

It said safe and ef­fec­tive vac­cines that could pre­vent in­fluen­za or re­duce the sever­i­ty of ill­ness were avail­able at lo­cal health cen­tres.

"Vac­ci­na­tion is es­pe­cial­ly im­por­tant for peo­ple at high­er risk of se­ri­ous com­pli­ca­tions of in­fluen­za and for peo­ple who live with or care for high risk in­di­vid­u­als. Af­ter vac­ci­na­tion, per­sons still ought to take pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sures to re­duce the spread of virus­es," it added.

Pre­ven­tion tips

In­fluen­za can spread when an in­fect­ed per­son coughs or sneezes and droplets con­tain­ing virus­es get in­to the air and are in­haled by per­sons near­by.

Per­sons can al­so be­come in­fect­ed by touch­ing sur­faces (door­knobs, desks etc.) con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed with flu virus­es and then touch­ing their eyes, mouth or nose.

To pre­vent the spread of in­fec­tious dis­eases like in­fluen­za, the pub­lic is urged to:

�2 Cov­er your mouth and nose with a tis­sue when cough­ing or sneez­ing. Do­ing so in­to the crook of your el­bow is al­so ac­cept­able.

�2 Wash hands with soap and wa­ter reg­u­lar­ly.

�2 Avoid close con­tact with peo­ple who have flu like symp­toms.

�2 If you have symp­toms of the flu, seek im­me­di­ate med­ical at­ten­tion if you have dif­fi­cul­ty breath­ing, chest tight­ness, the in­abil­i­ty to eat or drink, per­sis­tent vom­it­ing or con­fu­sion.