MANILA, 3 July 2009, 1600 hrs—Australia and Brunei Darussalam announced two deaths associated with Pandemic H1N1 2009, as the number of cases of the disease in the Western Pacific Region neared 12 000.
Australian health authorities said a 45-year-old man with underlying health conditions who died earlier this week was also infected with Pandemic H1N1 2009. The man, from the state of New South Wales, is the 10th person in Australia to die while infected with the virus. Meanwhile, the number of confirmed cases in Australia climbed by 198 to 4568, the highest in the Western Pacific Region.
In Brunei Darussalam, a 12-year-old child with Pandemic H1N1 and other serious health conditions died on 2 July. The patient had been in a critical condition with liver-failure and pneumonia since 26 June. New infections in that country increased by 27 since the last reporting period to reach a total 93. In response, the Health Ministry has set strict controls on hospital visiting hours including a ban on visitors younger than 12 and a limit of two visitors per patient.
Japan's Ministry of Health said a genetic mutation of Pandemic H1N1 that is resistant to the antiviral drug Tamiflu had been discovered – the second such reported case. The latest case was found in a woman from Osaka who had been taking Tamiflu for about two weeks, according to Japanese media reports. She was recovering after being given another antiviral drug, Relenza.
In Geneva, WHO insisted that Tamiflu was still effective against Pandemic H1N1 2009, despite the first reported case, in Denmark, of resistance in a patient treated with the antiviral drug. WHO described the case as isolated with no implications for public health, and is not changing its recommendations for the use of antivirals to treat Pandemic H1N1.
Singapore announced a shift in its clinical management of the pandemic as cases in that country climbed to 878. Under the new approach, people with flu-like symptoms are encouraged to seek treatment at clinics rather than go directly to hospitals. This would relieve the burden on ambulances and hospitals, allowing them to focus on patients with more severe illness.
The total number of laboratory confirmed cases in the Western Pacific Region stood at 11 942, as of 3 July, with 12 deaths (in brackets besides the case numbers below). A number of countries are now into a mitigation phase of their response to the disease and are no longer testing all suspected cases. Some countries are not reporting on a daily basis.
- Australia 4568 (10)
- Brunei Darussalam 93 (1)
- Cambodia 7
- China 915
- Hong Kong (China) 857
- Macao (China) 42
- Taiwan (China) 61
- Fiji 2
- Japan 1446
- Lao PDR 3
- Malaysia 112
- New Zealand 912
- Papua New Guinea 1
- Philippines 1709 (1)
- Republic of Korea 202
- Samoa 1
- Singapore 878
- Vanuatu 2
- Viet Nam 131
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