Pune/Chennai/New Delhi, Aug 10 (Inditop.com) The H1N1 contagion continued its spread through India Monday as two more people died, taking the toll to six, and concern acquired a panicky edge in many parts with several schools closed and a 200 sq km area around pandemic “epicentre” Pune shutting down completely.
Baburao Mane, a 35-year-old ayurvedic doctor in Pune, and four-year-old Sanjay Balakrishnan in Chennai died of the Influenza A (H1N1) virus early Monday. Six more patients in Pune were in critical condition.
They became the fifth and sixth victims, respectively, of the viral disease that has so far infected 864 people in India. Of these, 523 have been discharged from hospital and 341 are under treatment, Health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad told reporters after a three-hour meeting with Cabinet Secretary K.M. Chandrasekhar and senior bureaucrats of his ministry.
H1N1 cases in Maharashtra, meanwhile, continued to spiral with Pune reporting 18 new cases and Mumbai 33, taking the state’s total to 327, said an official in the Swine Flu Control Room.
The government has finalised guidelines for private laboratories that will be allowed to screen for swine flu.
It was also decided at the meeting of the central health ministry to continue with airport and sea-port screenings and install thermal scanners at international airports in the hope of containing the viral infection that has killed three people in Pune, one in Mumbai, one in Ahmedabad and one in Chennai.
While Mane, who worked in Pune’s slum areas, had been admitted to Pune’s Sassoon Hospital five days ago and had been on the ventilator for three days, Balakrishnan had been admitted to a private Chennai hospital last week with fever and diarrhoea and tested positive for the flu on Saturday.
Giving details of Mane’s death, Sassoon Hospital dean Arun Jhamkar told reporters: “When Mane was brought here he had developed pneumonia in both lungs. In addition, he also had acute respiratory distress syndrome. His condition worsened and he did not respond to medicines. He died at 7.20 a.m. today.”
Sources at Chennai’s Neta Hospital, where Balakrishnan was admitted, said the boy was diagnosed with kidney failure and chest congestion. On Sunday, he suffered multiple organ failure and was put on a ventilator.
In a drastic measure to curb the pandemic, the Maharashtra government decided to shut down not just schools and colleges but also cinema halls and shopping malls for three to seven days in the Pune-Pimpri-Chinchwad belt spread over 200 sq km and houses about 3.5 million people.
All educational institutions shall be shut down till Aug 17 in Pune, the state’s IT capital, and the twin cities of Pimpri-Chinchwad, Pune Guardian Minister Ajit Pawar said.
And, while malls shall remain shut for a week, multiplexes and cinema halls shall be closed for the next three days, he said.
Many schools across the country were closed too.
In Mumbai, at least two schools — St. Dominic Savio National Open School, Andheri east and Arya Vidya Mandir School in Juhu — declared that they would shut for a week after some students were found to be infected.
Similarly, in Delhi, Sanskriti School, Delhi Public School (East of Kailash branch) had announced a week’s holiday Sunday. On Monday, the junior Modern School followed suit as two of its students tested positive for the disease.
In Bangalore, the Frank Anthony Public School also announced that it would remain closed for a week. This is the first school in this southern tech hub to declare a holiday because of swine flu.
The outbreak spread in other states too.
The number of positive cases in West Bengal reached 10 while in Andhra Pradesh, which had reported India’s first H1N1 case and 74 positive cases, went on the alert to contain the spread.
Uttar Pradesh, which has reported only three cases, was gripped by panic with people making a beeline for chemists to buy masks.
And in Chandigarh, 17 members of a family, who came in contact with an influenza A (H1N1) infected patient, were quarantined in their home.
Some states seem to have been spared.
Assam Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi Monday said there were no swine flu cases reported in the state so far, but said 100 doctors were being trained to deal with the virus in case of an outbreak.
“We cannot be complacent and hence we are getting some 100 doctors trained to deal with the disease,” the chief minister said.
