MONTREAL, QUE: APRIL 30, 2009 -- Montreal resident Amanda Mussgnug gets checked by triage nurse Sally Yip at the emergency ward of the St Mary's hospital in Montreal. Quebec registered the province's first confirmed case of swine flu in the Montreal area on Thursday, April 30, 2009.
A Quebec man became the first person in Canada to contract the H1N1 virus after taking the Tamiflu vaccine, raising concerns about the drug’s reliability.
The man, 60, was given Tamiflu after his son fell ill with H1N1, but contracted the deadly flu anyway. He recovered quickly without going to hospital. It appears that nobody caught the drug-resistant strain from him.
Five instances of immunity to Tamiflu have been reported since a Danish man became the first patient to resist the drug at the end of last month. In four of the five cases, patients had been taking Tamiflu to prevent infection.
Doctors have said taking Tamiflu as a prophylactic or preventative can give rise to resistant strains of the virus.
But in one of the five cases a San Francisco woman diagnosed during a visit to Hong Kong the patient had never taken Tamiflu, suggesting the strain she caught was already resistant. So far, no other cases of Tamiflu-resistant H1N1 have been reported in the U.S.
A spokesperson for the Public Health Agency of Canada told The Canadian Press the Quebec man “appears to be an isolated case,” adding the agency is watching closely for similar cases.
The agency recommends using Tamiflu for treatment only, not prophylaxis. [tell that to Saudi Arabia....]
Friday, the Quebec government confirmed 10 new cases of the virus, bringing the total number of infections in the province since the end of April to 2,294.
hat-tip Niman
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