The Karnataka Health and Family Welfare Department held meetings on Monday with representatives of private hospitals enlisted to support efforts to tackle H1N1, as 12 more people tested positive for the virus in the city.
Doctors serving in hospitals and medical colleges in State are in a higher state of alert following the first confirmed case of Influenza A (H1N1) infection. Isolation wards in select hospitals are being kept ready for any eventuality, doctors have asked people to observe caution but not to get panicky.
Influenza has the potential to infect many people quickly. Although the death rate for seasonal flu is probably only around 1% of those affected, when the numbers so affected run into millions, as they do in India, the number of people who die will also be large.
Jammu: The blood samples of five more persons having symptoms of suspected swine flu were airlifted today to the National Institute of Communicable Diseases (NICD) in New Delhi, taking the total number to 27 since July 10.
The first large-scale studies of people affected by swine flu in Europe and the US are out. And both studies show that while the number of sick people is high, it is a small fraction of the total population.
Both studies also show that the severity of swine flu is not high , with 0.6% of all confirmed cases dying in the US (till July 24). The corresponding figure is barely 0.1% in Europe.
When almost the entire country is on high alert over Swine flu and when the hyped national media is paying prime-time attention to it, Bihar is suffering from cerebral malaria. At least six people have died due to the disease and over thousands are in the grip of it.
