A 27-year-old Catholic priest has become Poland's twelfth victim whose death is being attributed to the A/H1N1 virus commonly known as swine flu.

The priest passed away late Monday evening while being treated in the Regional Hospital in Gorzow Wielkopolska, western Poland, says hospital director Andrzej Szmit, adding that an autopsy will show if the A/H1N1 virus was the direct cause of death.

Meanwhile, Tomasz Misztal of the Chief Sanitary Inspectorate has announced two additional victims of the swine flu virus – a 27-year-old man in Kielce, central Poland, and a patient at a Bialystok hospital in the north of the country.

Doctors have yet to announce that any of the 12 deaths attributed to swine flu in Poland were directly caused by the virus. To date, 664 people in the country carry the A/H1N1 virus.

Seasonal flu count up

The Institute for Public Health announced Monday that 97,053 people in Poland were registered with common seasonal influenza in the third week of November, up from just over 3,000 in the same time period in 2008. An average of 36.4 out of 100 people in Poland currently have the flu.

That count is up from about 42,000 flu cases in the second week of November.

The National Committee on Flu Pandemics will meet Wednesday to assess the situation. (mmj)