A 24-year-old male student became the third person to die of A(H1N1) influenza, or swine flu, yesterday morning, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) confirmed during a press conference.
“We urge young people to make sure they report to a hospital or see a doctor whenever they get flu symptoms,” CDC spokesman Lin Ting (林頂) said.
Lin said that the young man began to experience severe flu symptoms on Aug. 11 and sought treatment at the Taitung Christian Hospital, where he tested negative for the new strain of influenza.
Three days after he was hospitalized, the patient developed pneumonia and was transferred to the Mackay Memorial Hospital Taitung Branch, Lin said.
He was immediately put into the intensive care unit for further checks and medical treatment.
On Aug. 20, he was registered as a severe swine flu case and the hospital filed a request for an extra-corporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) machine with National Taiwan University Hospital. An ECMO and physicians from the hospital arrived in Taitung by helicopter at around 9:30pm on Thursday and began treatment, but the patient passed away at 1:30am yesterday.
Lin said that the patient, who had never been abroad, led a group of 51 children from Aboriginal tribes in Taitung on an around-the-nation bike trip between Aug. 1 and Aug. 10, prior to his infection. CDC officials also carried out tests on all those who had come into contact with the victim, but no other cases had been detected as of press time yesterday.
Lin said there have been 38 severe cases of swine flu and three of them had died. The CDC has given up calculating cluster infection cases now that they have become a normal part of the epidemic, he said.
ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY CNA
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