The new H1N1 swine flu virus claimed the life of a 20-year old Chicago woman on Saturday, one day after giving birth to a baby via Cesarean section at the city’s University of Illinois Medical Center, according to local news.
The Chicago Sun Times reported that a spokeswoman for the hospital said that Caitlin Huber died of “complications from the swine flu and pneumonia“, after she was admitted on May 23 with flu-like symptoms.
Officials said Huber’s condition deteriorated quicky and her baby, a 27-week fetus was delivered by Caesarean on Friday. The baby is being cared for in the neonatal intensive care unit at the hospital, reported the Chicago Tribune.
Huber is reported to have had and “underlying medical condition”, as did three other people, two men and a woman, who have died in Chicago as a result of the swine flu.
According to the Tribune, the state health authorities said there are now 1,268 confirmed swine flu cases in Illinois. This means the state has around 8 per cent of the US total of 11,054 confirmed and probable cases reported yesterday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
52 states, including District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, have now reported confirmed cases of H1N1 swine flu.
Two other states have reported more cases than Illinois, Wisconsin’s total number of cases is now 1,905 and Texas is 1,405.
Apart from the 4 deaths in Illinois (only three of them appear in the CDC bulletin), Arizona and New York have also reported 4, Texas has reported 3, and Missouri, Utah and Washington have each reported 1, and there are media reports of a death in Michigan that has not yet appeared on the CDC list.
On a global scale, according to the latest World Health Organization figures reported in update number 43 on 3 June, 66 countries have officially reported 19,273 lab confirmed cases of influenza A(H1N1) infection, including 117 deaths (97 of them in Mexico).
While many new cases are emerging south of the equator (for instance Australia has 204 more new cases in their total of 501), the US continues to dominate the scene: of the 1,863 new cases worldwide since the last WHO update, 1,078 of them are in the US.
Although the WHO update shows no more new cases of death in Mexico since the last report, AFP news agency reported yesterday that the Mexican health ministry have announced their country’s new H1N1 death toll went up by 6 to 103, and their case count went up by 200 to 5,460.
Egypt has now reported a confirmed case to the WHO, making it the first country in Africa to report the virus.
According to a report from the WHO regional office for Africa in mid-May, all countries in the region have now put in place revised or updated contingency and emergency preparedness and response plans for tacking A/H1N1. They have also set up emergency committees and task forces, and are enhancing surveillance to speed up early detection, lab comfirmation of cases, and rapid response.
Source: Chicago Tribune, Chicago Sun Times, AFP, WHO.
Written by: Catharine Paddock, PhD