: Swine flu claimed the lives of two women here, a health official said.
“One was a resident of Chandannagore [Hooghly district] and the other was visiting Kolkata from Mumbai. Five more samples were tested today [Thursday] but turned out be negative,” the Swasthya Bhavan official said.
The deaths occurred on Wednesday evening, the official said. An eight-year-old child who has tested positive for swine flu, undergoing treatment at the city’s B.C. Roy Memorial Hospital for Children, is said to be in a serious condition, he added.
Till Wednesday, 10 out of 22 samples from the State tested positive for swine flu, an official of the National Institute of Cholera and Enteric Diseases (NICED) had said.
Stating that the outbreak of the H1N1 virus across the country was ‘not too severe’, joint secretary of the National Health Mission (under the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare, Government of India) Manoj Jhalani told The Hindu that the virus has not yet claimed as many lives as it had in 2009.
More than 150 persons have died due to swine flu across the nation this year.
