A researcher works at the examination center at Ho Chi Minh City Tropical Diseases Hospital

A seven-member team has been working around the clock at the Ho Chi Minh City Tropical Diseases Hospital ever since the influenza A (H1N1) virus was discovered, looking for ways to fight it.

Thanh and his multidisciplinary team members finished the diagnostic program in mid April, and started to receive nasal and throat fluid samples of suspects for testing.

It was on May 29 they found the first positive sample. Three tests were carried out to confirm the result that was announced on May 31 by the HCMC Health Department.

Since then, the team has received 40-50 samples a day for testing, and the seven of them have to take turns to keep the office going day and night. Two members work 36-hour shifts, during which they’re totally separated from their families.

Thanh said that with each sample, they first disabled whatever virus or organism they found, broke its coat in a biological wardrobe, then added several chemicals to extract its genes and tested the genes in a real-time PCR (polymerase chain reaction) machine. The PCR technique amplifies a single or few copies of a piece of DNA across several orders of magnitude.

The process takes six to eight hours, he added.

Another team member, Dr. Vo Minh Hien, would monitor the patients that tested positive for the virus. Based on test results, Hien would estimate how long it would take for the patients to test negative for the virus after treatment.

If the patient does not recover after seven days, the team would decode the virus’s gene to see if the patient was immune to the medicines, in order to either increase the dosage or try a different treatment.

The team has worked with SARS and bird flu virus H5N1 which are more dangerous than this new one, Thanh added.

Nguyen Van Vinh Chau, head of the examination faculty of the hospital, said the hospital’s examination center is among four in the country recognized by the WHO as having the capacity to diagnose the development of H1N1.

As of last Friday, the center had examined 387 samples including of which more than 30 tested positive for the virus.

Meanwhile, Director Nguyen Thu Van of the Vaccine and Bio-Technology Products No. 1 Company (VABIOTECH) in Hanoi said Thursday the firm expects to produce a vaccine for the virus, also known as swine flu, in six months.

VABIOTECH, the Institute of Vaccines and Medical Biology and HCMC-based Pasteur Institute are currently the only producers of bird flu vaccines in the country.

Source: TT, TN