Kevon Felmine

Doc­tors at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal are prob­ing a sus­pect­ed case of H1N1 In­fluen­za (swine flu) af­ter a Point Fortin se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer was ad­mit­ted af­ter ex­hibit­ing symp­toms of the dead­ly virus.

The lat­est in­ci­dent comes two weeks af­ter Siparia moth­er Cher­rie Ryce died from the ill­ness at the hos­pi­tal. While doc­tors have not yet con­firmed whether the 42-year-old of­fi­cer has the virus, he re­mains ward­ed in a crit­i­cal con­di­tion at the In­ten­sive Care Unit.

Swabs were ex­pect­ed to be tak­en from the pa­tient yes­ter­day to be sent for analy­sis at the Caribbean Pub­lic Health Agency (Carpha) lab­o­ra­to­ry in Port-of-Spain. Hos­pi­tal staff says it usu­al­ly takes four days for re­sults to re­turn.

In an in­ter­view with the T&T Guardian, a rel­a­tive said he was ill since Oc­to­ber 23 but when his flu wors­ened last Fri­day, he checked in­to the Point Fortin Area Hos­pi­tal with high fever and short breath.

Blood sam­ples were tak­en to test for dengue fever but those re­sults re­turned neg­a­tive. How­ev­er, he was ex­pect­ed to be test­ed for lep­tospiro­sis. He was placed on a reg­i­ment of his­t­a­mine and ward­ed un­til Sat­ur­day morn­ing when his health de­te­ri­o­rat­ed fur­ther.

The rel­a­tive added: "I was not too wor­ried be­cause I said if it was crit­i­cal, they would have trans­ferred him to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

"Around 6 am Sun­day, we got a call from doc­tors at the Point Fortin Area Hos­pi­tal say­ing they want­ed to speak to us. When we went, they said his sit­u­a­tion wors­ened overnight and they were trans­fer­ring him to the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal.

"When they ar­rived, the doc­tors there were up­set that he was not trans­ferred soon­er. They said he should not have been at Point Fortin so long with lim­it­ed care.

"By then he could not breathe on his own and they hooked him up to a breath­ing ma­chine and he was kept in the re­sus­ci­ta­tion room from sev­er­al hours," the rel­a­tive said.

Med­ical di­rec­tor: Too ear­ly to call

Med­ical di­rec­tor at the San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal Dr Anand Chat­ter­goon said un­til they re­ceived re­sults on the pa­tient, it would be pre­ma­ture to say there was an­oth­er case of the H1N1 In­fluen­za.

In a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day, Chat­ter­goon said while the pa­tient was sus­pect­ed of hav­ing the virus, test­ing for H1N1 was a pro­to­col that all pa­tients ex­hibit­ing pneu­mo­nia-like symp­toms un­der­went.

"I can't hon­est­ly say we have a case un­less we have con­fir­ma­tion. We get plen­ty pa­tients with pneu­mo­nia through­out the year and that is noth­ing new for us.

"If a pa­tient comes to us with pneu­mo­nia, we can't say it is H1N1 un­til we have con­fir­ma­tion from the lab­o­ra­to­ry. We can say that we sus­pect or it is pos­si­ble but we can't re­al­ly say yet.

"That is an hon­est sit­u­a­tion but we do have some­one here for that. We have oth­er cas­es be­cause you see any­time we get a bad pneu­mo­nia pa­tient, we check.

"For ex­am­ple, we knew that Cher­rie had it be­cause we got con­fir­ma­tion from the lab­o­ra­to­ry. The treat­ment is the same for every­one and it does not change.

"It's just an in­dex of sus­pi­cion be­cause it presents it­self like bad chest in­fec­tion, which is a com­mon thing in the In­ten­sive Care Unit. We don't like to just shoot our mouths off and say 'yes we have it' and then it turns out that it is not H1N1.

"We would pan­ic staff and the coun­try un­nec­es­sar­i­ly so we nor­mal­ly wait un­til we get con­fir­ma­tion," Chat­ter­goon said.

He said the wait­ing pe­ri­od for re­sults var­ied as test­ing for H1N1 In­fluen­za fell di­rect­ly un­der the Min­istry of Health.