Swine flu strain found resistant to drug

HONG Kong yesterday detected a strain of swine flu that was resistant to Tamiflu, the main anti-viral flu drug, the health department reported on its website.

The statement said the resistant strain of influenza A (H1N1) was detected during routine tests of its sensitivity to anti-virals.

“This is the first time Tamiflu resistance in HSI virus (has been) found in Hong Kong,” a spokesman said.

The case came as the Japanese health ministry said doctors had detected the second case worldwide of a patient resistant to Tamiflu, widely used to treat the illness.

In the Hong Kong case the resistant virus was isolated from a specimen taken from a 16-year-old girl who arrived in the southern Chinese city from San Francisco last month.

She was admitted to hospital and opted not to take Tamiflu, the spokesman said, but was discharged after a week.

The strain is not resistant to the other anti-viral drug, Relenza, the health department said.

Meanwhile, a 19-year-old man has become the fourth person in Britain to die after contracting swine flu, health chiefs said yesterday.

The teenager from south London, who had serious underlying health problems, tested positive for the virus following his death on Wednesday and is the first person to die with swine flu in the capital.

His death comes amid warnings that the number of cases could soar to 100,000 a day by the end of next month.

Health chiefs said Britain has moved past the stage of containing the outbreak and into the “treatment phase”.

Dr Simon Tanner, regional director of public health for London, said: “It’s with sadness that we have to announce the death of a patient in London who has subsequently tested positive for H1N1 swine flu.”

He said his thoughts were with the man’s family and no further details about the patient would be released.

London, along with the West Midlands, is a swine flu hotspot and Dr Tanner said everyone had a responsibility to “catch it, bin it, kill it” to protect the vulnerable.

But he added: “It’s not completely clear as to why we saw the hotspots that we have seen.”

Meanwhile, eight British school students have been hospitalised in north-east Romania with swine flu, an embassy official said.

Embassy communications officer Raluca Bragarea said the group arrived in Romania on June 25 as part of an annual exchange programme to work with disabled children in the northeast city of Iasi.

The British teenagers, aged between 16 and 18, are in a group of 19 students and three teachers from the private Sevenoaks School in Kent.

They are in isolation at Iasi’s Hospital for Infectious Diseases and British diplomats are liaising with the school and Romanian public health authorities to decide whether to fly the students home or keep them in the hospital.