Seventeen more cases of swine flu diagnosed

Published on Saturday 20 June 2009 19:42

A FURTHER 17 patients were diagnosed with swine flu yesterday across Scotland, taking the total number of cases to 566, health officials said.

There are 724 possible cases under investigation.

Of the newly confirmed cases of influenza A (H1N1), 16 are in Greater Glasgow and Clyde and one is in Highland.

A further two people are being investigated in NHS Lothian as "probable cases". One is travel related and one is not.

There are four patients with the virus being treated in hospital. No further school closures have been reported.

Health officials began diagnosing patients based on their symptoms alone after swine flu was declared a pandemic, but have scrapped the move after it led to an unexpectedly large rise in cases. Instead, new swabbing centres have been opened to provide more accurate results.

Last week a 38-year-old Glasgow woman, Jacqueline Fleming, became the first British person to die of swine flu. She had underlying health problems. Her prematurely born son Jack also died but did not have the virus.

Health secretary Nicola Sturgeon said yesterday: "Laboratory testing is now resuming for all possible cases in NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde and with the opening of the new swabbing centres the number of confirmed cases is likely to increase in the coming days."

Scotland's Chief Medical Officer Dr Harry Burns said cases might reduce over the summer but increase in winter.

He said: "Scotland continues to see rising numbers of cases of H1N1, a situation we have both predicted and prepared for.

"At the outset of this virus we were not sure how serious it was going to be. We currently have a small number of hospitalised cases and this week have tragically witnessed the first death.

"People should be assured that experience of this virus shows that it is causing a pattern of illness which settles within a week or ten days and is similar in severity to the kind of flu we see every winter," he added.