DIX­IE-ANN DICK­SON

T&T has record its first two In­fluen­za A/H1N1 deaths and a third death is be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed. Health Min­is­ter Jer­ry Narace con­firmed this yes­ter­day at a me­dia con­fer­ence at the min­istry's of­fice, Park Street, Port-of-Spain.

Fol­low­ing a state­ment on Tues­day night that two deaths were be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal, Narace said the re­sults, which were re­ceived yes­ter­day morn­ing, were pos­i­tive. He said: "Un­for­tu­nate­ly, we are re­port­ing the first two H1N1 re­lat­ed deaths in T&T." Narace added that to date, 158 lab­o­ra­to­ry con­firmed cas­es of swine flu have been re­port­ed and two con­firmed deaths in the coun­try.

How­ev­er, he said, the third death, that of a woman, was be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed.

There were al­so five oth­er H1N1 cas­es pend­ing con­fir­ma­tion at the San Fer­nan­do Hos­pi­tal, he said. "The threat was and re­mains a very se­ri­ous one. We are cur­rent­ly fac­ing a se­ri­ous sit­u­a­tion that we con­tin­ue to man­age," Narace said. How­ev­er, the min­is­ter called on cit­i­zens to re­main calm and fol­low all the nec­es­sary health guide­lines. Asked if the min­istry had any plans of ad­vis­ing the Gov­ern­ment against host­ing Com­mon­wealth Heads of Gov­ern­ment Meet­ing (CHOGM), Narace said: "No, CHOGM is safe." CHOGM will be held in Port-of-Spain next month.

Dr Al­bert Per­saud, di­rec­tor of South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty, said the two de­ceased, who were adult males and of the ages 30 and 42, en­tered the San Fer­nan­do Hos­pi­tal in res­pi­ra­to­ry dis­tress. He said one of them was quite late in the course of his ill­ness, while the oth­er came from a pri­vate in­sti­tu­tion. They died while be­ing treat­ed at the In­ten­sive Care Unit just over 24 hours af­ter be­ing ad­mit­ted. The deaths came be­tween Tues­day evening and yes­ter­day morn­ing. Per­saud as­sured that the pa­tients were giv­en the best care and were at­tend­ed and man­aged by ex­perts in se­vere res­pi­ra­to­ry ill­ness.

Narace said 260,000 vac­cines were sched­uled to ar­rive in the coun­try by mid-No­vem­ber when they would be dis­trib­uted to preg­nant women, high risk groups and chil­dren.

Sco­bie-Boyd said the H1N1 pan­dem­ic virus cur­rent­ly re­mained treat­able by the two drugs Os­eltamivir, which is found in Tam­i­flu and Zanamivir. How­ev­er, she said, an­ti-vi­ral treat­ment was most ef­fec­tive when ad­min­is­tered ear­ly. Health pa­tients who are not in high risk groups or do not have any com­pli­cat­ed ail­ments are not re­quired to be treat­ed with an­ti-vi­rals, she said. How­ev­er, late last evening there were un­con­firmed re­ports that an­oth­er per­son died at the San Fer­nan­do Hos­pi­tal and the ward was be­ing cor­doned off and vis­i­tors were turned away and told there was an emer­gency. When con­tact­ed about the lat­est de­vel­op­ment, Narace did not con­firm or de­ny but gave the as­sur­ance that a re­lease would be post­ed to­day.