A dozen people from NI have now died after contracting the swine flu virus, writes ICarla Liébana.

Last week, two more deaths added to the total number of local victims as a nine-year-old-girl with underlying health problems and a 65-year-old woman with serious health complications passed away.

Ten of those 12 deaths occurred in Northern Ireland - including five children of whom several were special needs pupils - with schools in that sector now being one of the main targets for receiving vaccine - and another man who died in England and a young woman, in Spain.

The vaccination programme recently began with priority groups, including people prone to developing complications, and now those children in special needs schools and individuals aged below six months to be included.

This week's figures also revealed that the risk remains highest in the 5-14 age group.

Other risk groups are pregnant women, household contacts of immunocompromised individuals, people aged over 65 and patients with underlying health problems.

Northern Ireland's Chief Medical Officer, Dr Michael McBride said: "I would like to reassure the public that we will have enough vaccine to vaccinate everyone in the priority groups over the next four to five weeks."

According to the Department of Health, during the past week 215 new cases of laboratory confirmed swine flu brings the total number to 1,093 while the number of people hospitalised since the pandemic started is 495.

Although this week there were nine more admissions compared to the week before, there was also a decrease in a key indicator of how the virus is spreading: GP consultations for flu and flu-like illness and the number of people contacting out-of-hours services with symptoms have gone down.

Dr McBride said the decrease "may be partly due to half term holidays" so is too soon to say if the peak has been reached.

(CL/BMcc)