New Brunswick public health officials are reporting the province's first death related to a drug-resistant H1N1 strain.

A 27-year-old Quispamsis man died in hospital on Monday after nearly a month in intensive care, public health officials said. Doctors tried treating him with the antiviral drug Tamiflu but those efforts failed.

The man was the eighth person in New Brunswick to die with the H1N1 virus.

“He was suffering from a number of underlying conditions that predisposed him to having a very severe case of the disease,” said Dr. Paul Van Buynder, the province's deputy chief medical health officer.

According to Van Buynder, the H1N1 strain the man contracted was resistant to drugs such as Tamiflu that are used to fight the virus.

Vaccine available

Van Buynder said it's unlikely the victim had received an H1N1 shot. Had he been vaccinated, the man would have been safe from the virus — even the drug-resistant strain, Van Buynder said.

Health officials said they have not found a second case linked to the most recent H1N1 flu victim.

About two-thirds of New Brunswick residents have received the H1N1 shot.

Van Buynder encouraged those who haven't been vaccinated to get a shot as soon as possible.

"If you didn't get vaccinated and you get sick, we try and treat it with medicine. Sometimes the virus changes so that the medicine doesn't work. It would be like antibiotic resistance," said Van Buynder. "But what the vaccine does is, it builds up your own immune system so that you're resistant to the virus in the first place."

Although mass vaccinations have ended, shots are still available in VON (Victorian Order of Nurses) clinics, public health clinics and from certain family doctors.