Swine flu fatality removed from official H1N1 death list

The Health Ministry removed one of the victims from the official list of Israelis who have died of swine flu, following an autopsy Thursday night.

The 40-year-old man had died of heart failure Thursday morning following a three-day stay at Petah Tikva's Beilinson Hospital. He was confirmed as having contracted the H1N1 virus, also known as swine flu. The man's condition had begun to improve after he was hospitalized, but he ultimately died.

The health ministry placed the man on the official swine flu deaths list, but following his autopsy on Thursday it was determined that the cause of the man's death was not the swine flu he had been suffering from, and he was removed from the list, bringing the national death toll back down to seven.

Two additional Israelis suffering from the swine flu virus had also died Thursday. The Health Ministry reported Thursday evening that a 60-year-old Haifa woman who had died in the hospital overnight had tested positive for the H1N1 virus.

The woman was hospitalized at Haifa's Rambam Hospital on Saturday with a blood infection and a urinary tract infection. Her condition was classified as serious and she was hooked up to a respirator.

Earlier Thursday, the ministry reported that another Israeli had died of complications from the swine flu virus.

The victim was a woman, 54, who had been diagnosed with intestinal cancer. She tested positive for swine flu at Tel Aviv's Ichilov Hospital, where she later died.

Five patients diagnosed as having the disease had already succumbed to the virus, of the 29 hospitalized in intensive care. There are currently 13 patients hospitalized with the disease.

According to a Health Ministry report released Wednesday, the number of people who have contracted the disease rose 3.6 percent over the past two weeks.

The ministry has recorded 2,148 cases of verified swine flu in Israel, half of them patients under the age of 30. The disease is spreading fastest in Haifa, the north and Jerusalem, though the largest number of people suffering from the flu has been recorded in the central region.

A study conducted by the Health Ministry's department of epidemiology, based on 1,503 swine flu patients, showed that only 5 percent of those diagnosed were over the age of 50. This figure bucks the trend of normal seasonal flus, in which the disease is more widespread among older citizens.

The study also showed that swine flu is slightly more widespread among men than women, like most infectious diseases.

In the first three weeks of July, patients whose symptoms could indicate swine flu were tested for the disease only if they were considered high-risk, including those suffering from chronic diseases, pregnant women and hospitalized patients, while for the last two weeks, only people admitted with acute respiratory conditions or people living near a known outbreak have been tested. Therefore, the ministry's figures for the rise in the number of swine flu patients are estimates, based on the number of people whose symptoms seem likely to be caused by the disease.

By the end of last week, these estimates found, the number of people contracting swine flu each week had risen to 1,346 - a fourfold increase compared to two weeks earlier. In the Tel Aviv region, 696 people a week now catch swine flu, or 2.2 times more than two weeks ago, while in the Jerusalem region, the number rose to 355 people a week, or 4.4 times more than two weeks earlier. In Haifa, it rose to 348 people - a whopping 7.9 times more than two weeks earlier. In the south, the number rose to 332 people, or 3.5 times more than two weeks earlier, while in the north, it rose to 244 people, or fully five times more than two weeks ago.

Senior health and finance ministry officials met in the Prime Minister's Office last night to discuss the Health Ministry's request for NIS 400 million to prepare for the winter, including by ordering additional vaccines against both swine flu and regular flu strains.

The first case of swine flu in Israel - contracted abroad - was diagnosed on April 26. The first locally contracted case was confirmed on May 10.

By the end of June, 64 percent of those diagnosed with the disease had been infected inside Israel, and the rate has continued to climb, to 84 percent during the first three weeks of July and 91.5 percent during July's final week.

Most swine flu patients share symptoms such as runny noses, headaches, coughing, muscle pain and shortness of breath. Other symptoms include sore throat, nausea, vomiting and diarrhea.

The Health Ministry soon plans to expand testing for the disease to another five laboratories across Israel.