Dept of Health preparing for swine flu deaths

The Department of Health and Children is preparing for deaths as a result of the swine flu pandemic, officials confirmed this afternoon.

In the past week, at least 500 people have presented to their GP with flu-like illnesses, and the number of confirmed cases has now reached 226.

Twelve people have been admitted to hospital with the virus so far, and two of them are now in intensive care.

One sufferer, a Slovakian man, was in a critical condition at St James Hospital in Dublin today.

“We would expect and anticipate that at some stage we will begin to see some deaths unfortunately,” Dr Tony Holohan, the State’s Chief Medical Officer said.

“In a sense, that's not going to surprise us or change our public health management of this - quite clearly we hope that that will not happen but it is a likely scenario and a likely by-product of an increase in the number of cases.

“Certainly, the UK has seen quite a number of deaths and I think there have been deaths in four other countries throughout Europe.

“We're not predicting it's going to happen but it's something we're planning for.”