Woman dies of flu in Pune, countrywide toll rises to 28

A 36-year-old woman has died of swine flu in Pune, the city worst hit by the virus, taking the nationwide toll to 28. As the disease continued to spread, 152 fresh cases were reported till yesterday.

With this, the total number of positive cases has mounted to 1707 across the country, Health Ministry officials said in New Delhi.
     
The woman, identified as Bina Gonsalves, died of swine flu in Sassoon hospital in Pune late last night, official sources said. She was admitted to the hospital on August 13 with suspected swine flu symptoms, they said. The death toll due to the disease in Pune has now risen to 13.
     
Besides the fatalities in Pune and Bangalore, which accounts for five deaths, one person each has died due to the viral disease in Ahmedabad, Nashik, Raipur, Bilaspur, Chennai and Thiruvananthapuram and two each in Mumbai and Vadodara.

Health Ministry officials said of the 152 new flu cases being reported yesterday, Mumbai recorded the highest with 60 cases. Pune reported 18 cases, Delhi and Chennai 11 each while Bangalore and Coimbatore 10 each, they said.

Nine cases were reported in Aurangabad while Ernakulam and Mangalore had three cases each and Akola, Devangere and Jalna two cases each, they said. Ahmadnagar, Solapur, Latur, Nagpur, Jalgaon, Dhule, Belgaum, Hubli, Hrudyalaya (Karnataka), Dibrugarh (Assam), and Shimla reported one case each, the officials said, adding that a total of 97 cases was reported from Maharashtra.

"Sixty cases have been reported from Mumbai of which 57 are indigenous with no known foreign travel history," they said. Pune accounted for 18 cases while 20 other cases were also reported from nine other districts in Maharashtra.
     
The officials said 11 cases were registered in Delhi of which 10 cases did not have any foreign travel history. Karnataka recorded a total of 18 cases yesterday of which 10 were from Bangalore, which has suffered the maximum number of flu casualties after Pune. Three cases were reported from Kereala also.
     
A total of 8658 persons have been tested so far out of which 1,707 were positive for Influenza A (H1N1), they said, adding that 694 of these have been discharged from hospitals.