London - A 19-year-old male from London has become the fourth person in Britain to die from swine flu, the authorities said Friday. The teenager, who suffered serious underlying health problems, tested positive for the virus following his death on Wednesday. Tests after his death showed that he had contracted the H1N1 virus.
The latest death comes after a doubling of the infection rate in Britain over the past few weeks and government predictions that the number of diagnosed cases could soar to 100,000 a day by the end of August.
"Flu viruses spread extremely quickly so this is very much going as expected," the government's chief medical officer, Liam Donaldson, said Friday.
Britain was the first European country to be struck by the disease following the return of a Scottish couple from honeymoon in Mexico early in the New Year.
The first person to die in Britain last month was Jacqui Fleming, a 38-year-old Scottish woman. Her baby boy, born nearly three months prematurely, later also died from causes not related to the virus.
The second victim was a 73-year-old man from Scotland and, last week, a six-year-old girl became the youngest British victim of the disease.
The authorities have stressed that all the people who have died in Britain so far had underlying health problems of an unspecified nature.
