Published: Monday, 29th June, 2009 2:00pm

Man, 73, dies of swine flu

AN elderly Inverclyde man who was suffering from swine flu has died.

Health officials have confirmed the 73-year-old, who was being treated at the Royal Alexandra Hospital in Paisley, above, at the time, passed away on Saturday night.

A spokesman for the Scottish Government said he was also suffering from underlying health complications.

The pensioner is the second person in the UK who was suffering from swine flu to die and had been in intensive care at the hospital for 15 days.

Scottish Health Secretary Nicola Sturgeon said: 'Our thoughts are with the family and friends of the patient at this tragic and very sad time. The family have asked for the patient"s identity to be kept private.

'Although it is concerning that the patient had swine flu, we are aware that the patient had very serious underlying health issues.

'It"s important to remember that the vast majority of those who have H1N1 are suffering from relatively mild symptoms.

A family spokesperson said: 'Our beloved relative was private in life and we would ask that his privacy continues to be respected as we try to come to terms with our loss.'

Dr Harry Burns, Scotland"s chief medical officer, said the death was a "tragedy" but also underlined that it was only the second death from swine flu in well over 4,000 cases in the UK.

He said: 'It"s a tragedy, but it doesn"t change our view that this is no more serious than winter flu.

'In fact this is the second case in about four and a half thousand cases that we"ve seen in the UK and that makes it a lot less severe, much less aggressive than we would normally see with a winter flu virus.'

According to the latest available figures, there were more than 4,200 laboratory confirmed cases in the UK including 922 in Scotland.