Third H1N1 death in Mumbai?

The Centre said there were no H1N1-related deaths reported for the second consecutive day on Tuesday, but a seven-month-old baby who had died early this morning in Mumbai was confirmed to have H1N1, reports Sanchita Sharma.

The Centre said there were no H1N1-related deaths reported for the second consecutive day on Tuesday, but a seven-month-old baby who had died early this morning in Mumbai was confirmed to have H1N1.

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“Modia Mohammad Shaikh, a resident of Byculla, died at Noor hospital early today,” said Additional Municipal Commissioner Manisha Mhaiskar, Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation.

This is the third swine flu death in Mumbai. Shaikh was being treated at the private hospital and was being administered Tamiflu supplied by civic authorities.

Ninety-nine new infections across the country took the infection tally to 2,026. Delhi reported 10 fresh cases.

The Union Ministry of Health’s data shows that entry screening at the airports is wasted effort.

Of the 10,578 persons screened, only 773 were identified through entry screening.

That’s just 7.3 per cent of the total numbers infected in India.

From among the rest, 1,644 were traced through contact tracing — people who had been in touch with an person who tested positive for swine flu – while 8,161 reported for testing on their own after the developed symptoms.

The process of assessing private labs in Delhi is still going on, said experts from National Centre of Disease Control (NCDC), which along with the National Institute of Virology was declared the nodal centre for H1N1 testing before India’s first H1N1 case was confirmed.

Six —Dr Lal Path labs, Quest Diagnostics, Auro Probe, Piramal Diagnostics, Religare SRL and Era Health— have been shortlisted for testing for H1N1. They went through a training session with the NCDC on Saturday.

“Along with testing H1N1 samples for the government at a subsided prices, these labs would also test samples on their own,” said an NCDC official, who didn’t not want to be named as he is unauthorised to speak to media. “We’re fixing a price for government samples, but they will be free to charge what they want from people who want to get tests done in the private sector.”

The labs were to collect test positive and negative samples for testing on Monday, but only two had collected samples till Tuesday evening.

Last week, Union Health Ministry had announced private labs that conform to biosafety guidelines can also test for H1N1.

Currently, H1N1 tests are done in three labs —NCDC, AIIMS, and Patel Chest Institute — in Delhi.