Last Updated: Wednesday, May 12, 2010 | 3:17 PM ET
CBC News
A Quebec man who recently returned from a trip to Cuba has died after
contracting the H1N1 virus.
The Shawinigan resident, who was in his fifties, was not vaccinated
against the virus.
Public health officials said the man fell ill after returning from Cuba
last week.
He went to a local hospital and was transferred to a bigger centre in
Montreal, where he died Sunday night, according to officials.
His death is an isolated case, and does not mark a third epidemic wave
of swine flu, said Quebec's public health agency.
"We know now that there are many flu cases in Cuba," said Dr. Gilles
Grenier, a public health director in the Shawinigan region.
"The hypothesis is that he got the virus over there, so it's really an
isolated case."
Earlier reports suggested the man suffered from asthma, but he had no
respiratory issues, Grenier said. Federal health officials have been
notified about the case because the man was travelling overseas.
But Canada's current H1N1 policy no longer requires health officials to
report weekly on hospitalizations and deaths, as they were obliged to do
during the 2009 outbreak.
According to the Public Health Agency of Canada's FluWatch for April 25
to May 1, only 14 hospitalizations (in B.C., Ontario, Quebec and Nova
Scotia) and two deaths (in Ontario) have been reported since the
beginning of 2010.
http://www.cbc.ca/health/story/2010/05/12/quebec-swine-flu-death.html
No comments:
Post a Comment