HYDERABAD: The deadly swine flu overshadowed the New Year festivities here claiming the life of a 21-year-old woman and her unborn child on Wednesday.

Hyderabad recorded four new H1N1 cases, including three minors.

Shainaaz Begum died while undergoing treatment at Osmania General Hospital. She was nine-months pregnant and was expected to deliver within a few days.

Sources said her swab and nasal samples were sent to Institute of Preventive Medicine (IPM) on December 29 but it could confirm her swine flu status only the next day at 5.15 pm. With the death, the swine flu toll rises to 11 in Telangana with two deaths occurring within 24 hours.

“Local city health officials immediately tracked down the deceased’s relatives and provided them prophylactic anti-viral drugs,” said a health official.

The other four fresh cases detected on Wednesday include a 17-month-boy, an 8-year-old boy, a 3-year-old girl and a 56-year-old woman from Nizamabad.

This takes the overall confirmed positive cases of swine flu in Telangana to 77.

“High number of confirmed cases in December is a case of concern and the H1N1 virus changing its behaviour could be a probability. We plan to send fresh suspect swine flu samples to Delhi-based National Centre for Disease Control to rule out this,” said Dr K Subhakar, the state swine flu coordinator who acknowledged that it was time for extra caution in the light of too many cases in December.

He also advised corporate hospitals taking up swine flu cases not to wait till the cases are confirmed by the IPM but to immediately provide them Tamiflu drugs if the swine flu symptoms persist for more than 48 hours.

Dr P Sambasiva Rao, the director of health services, Telangana said, “The deaths recorded so far should not be directly attributed to H1N1 virus. All of them actually died due to multi-organ failure or due to cardiac or lung ailments after having contracted swine flu.” He added that they are tracing five swine flu patients who went missing after they were confirmed positive.

