Swine Flu
As health officials from New York to Mexico raced on Saturday to combat a rare and rapidly spreading influenza virus, eight students at a Queens high school tested positive for a type of influenza that is probably swine flu, and possibly the same strain that has killed as many as 68 people in Mexico City.
At the same time, the World Health Organization said it was considering whether to declare an international public health emergency, a move that could involve travel advisories and border closings. For now, it only went so far as to term the outbreak a “public health emergency of international concern.”
In New York City the health commissioner, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, said at news conference that eight of nine students from St. Francis Preparatory School in Fresh Meadows, Queens, tested positive for the type A influenza virus, which meets the probable conditions for swine flu.
Additional tests are being conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and will probably be completed to determine whether that virus is the same H1N1 strain that was identified in Mexico on Friday, Dr. Frieden said.
“So far, every person we’ve identified has mild symptoms,” Dr. Frieden said. He said that none of the students had to be hospitalized.
Nonetheless, he said that if the centers confirmed that the students have swine flu, the health department will recommend that St. Francis not reopen on Monday “out of an abundance of caution.”
“You could say, all you got is a lot of kids with mild illness, why close the school?” Dr. Frieden said. “On the other hand, it is very important to say, that schools can be an area where not only can students become ill but can be an area for amplifying or spreading the infection.”
In Mexico, the effects of the virus were far more harsh and widespread, and the government response was far more sweeping.
President Felipe Calderón published an order Saturday that would give his government extraordinary powers to address the deadly flu epidemic, including isolating those affected by the rare virus, inspecting their homes and ordering the closing of any public events that might result in more infection.
The government has already taken steps to try to control the swine flu outbreak that has killed as many as 68 people and infected possibly 1,000 more. Since Friday, officials have canceled hundreds of public events and closed schools for millions of students in and around Mexico City. On Saturday, another 24 suspected cases were reported in the capital city, according to The Associated Press.
Mexicans were encouraged to avoid public places and if the went out to wear masks, known as tapabocas or cover-your-mouths.
In the United States, officials at the C.D.C. said on Saturday that they understood that the outbreak potential in the United States was serious.
“It’s clear that this is widespread,” said Dr. Anne Schuchat, interim deputy director for science and public health program for the C.D.C. said in a teleconference on Saturday. “We do not think we can contain the spread of this virus.”
By Saturday, eight cases of swine flu had been reported in the United States in addition to those in New York: seven in southern California, in San Diego and Imperial Counties, which share a border with Mexico; two in Cibolo, Tex., near San Antonio; and two in Kansas.
In New York City, Dr. Frieden said that 100 to 200 students from St. Francis Prep, which has a student body of 2,700, reported some symptoms of influenza.
“We don’t know if it is spreading from person to person,” he said. “In the cases we have seen, we have seen a very short incubation period. From the time you got exposed to the time you got sick was only one to two to five days.”
Although Dr. Frieden would not confirm whether students recently traveled to Mexico, at least two students interviewed on Saturday said that they knew of other students from the school that went there for Spring Break. On Thursday, about 75 students went to the school’s medical center with symptoms from headaches, to fevers, to burning eyes.
“When kids heard the news that people in Mexico City were dying from it, some kids were getting scared,” said Jack Castronova, 17, a student at the school.
In addition to the school in Fresh Meadows, Dr. Frieden said that health officials were examining 30 children from a day care center in the Bronx had flu-like symptoms. And at least two people who recently returned from Mexico contacted the city health department and said their children had similar symptoms, Dr. Frieden said.
He cautioned that schools can be a place where viruses spread rapidly because children do not always take precautions, like covering their mouths, to contain their germs.
“We will also continue working with hospitals to identify people with serious respiratory symptoms,” Dr. Frieden said.
Jessica Scaperotti, a spokeswoman for the health department, said that hospitals near St. Francis Prep had seen an increase in visits, “but the patients were found to have mild illnesses.”
The United States has a detailed pandemic preparedness plan that was written in 2005 during the early years of the scare over H5N1 bird flu. But one person involved in planning said that federal officials were “not pulling the trigger on any part of it yet.”
Officials are considering moving stockpiles of the flu drug Tamiflu and protective gear like masks and gloves closer to San Diego, San Antonio and other places where the first cases of swine flu were reported in the United States.
Before any aspect of the pandemic plan can be set in motion, one official explained, there has to be some idea how many people in Mexico are infected. Fewer than 100 deaths from pneumonia or flu-like illness in a city of 20 million is not very many.
Most of Mexico’s dead were young, healthy adults and none were over 60 or under 3 years old, the World Healrth Organization said. That alarms health officials because seasonal fluus cause most of their deaths among infants and the bedridden elderly, but pandemic flus often strike the young and healthy the hardest.
The current swine flu outbreak comes at a time when many of the top federal health positions in the United States have not been filled by the Obama adminstration. Dr. Besser is the acting head of the centers, and there is also an acting surgeon general.
A health official and a flu expert who were consulted on planning and who spoke on condition of anonymity to keep from being cut off from consultations said that in recent days they had taken part in several unnecessarily long conference calls with what one called “newbies.”
Teams from the centers have gone to Texas and California and will be helping local officials with case contacts, laboratory testing and other steps. They also will be watching for any sharp increase in emergency room admissions for respiratory problems. In addition, they want to examine whether the very unusual combination of North American swine, human and avian strains with a Eurasian swine strain, is mutating and whether it is becoming more virulent.
If the World Health Organization decides to raise its alert level to 4 from 3, indicating it had found sustained human-to-human transmission of the virus, the United States — whose pandemic alert level is now at zero — might raise its levels. That would include putting emergency rooms and first-responders on alert, making sure they have seasonal flu shots and putting them first in line for any early batches of a vaccine based on the current swine strain.
In addition, raising the alert level could also include closing schools, theaters and ball parks, requiring people to wear masks while on public transportation, banning large gatherings and imposing travel restrictions.
Public officials are usually reluctant to take such steps because of the panic and economic disruption they can cause.
To combat the disease, the centers has already started preparation of a “seed strain” for a swine flu vaccine, weakening the virus until it provides protection without causing disease takes time and careful testing.
At the same time, the World Health Organization said it was considering whether to declare an international public health emergency, a move that could involve travel advisories and border closings. For now, it only went so far as to term the outbreak a “public health emergency of international concern.”
In New York City the health commissioner, Dr. Thomas R. Frieden, said at news conference that eight of nine students from St. Francis Preparatory School in Fresh Meadows, Queens, tested positive for the type A influenza virus, which meets the probable conditions for swine flu.
Additional tests are being conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta and will probably be completed to determine whether that virus is the same H1N1 strain that was identified in Mexico on Friday, Dr. Frieden said.
“So far, every person we’ve identified has mild symptoms,” Dr. Frieden said. He said that none of the students had to be hospitalized.
Nonetheless, he said that if the centers confirmed that the students have swine flu, the health department will recommend that St. Francis not reopen on Monday “out of an abundance of caution.”
“You could say, all you got is a lot of kids with mild illness, why close the school?” Dr. Frieden said. “On the other hand, it is very important to say, that schools can be an area where not only can students become ill but can be an area for amplifying or spreading the infection.”
In Mexico, the effects of the virus were far more harsh and widespread, and the government response was far more sweeping.
President Felipe Calderón published an order Saturday that would give his government extraordinary powers to address the deadly flu epidemic, including isolating those affected by the rare virus, inspecting their homes and ordering the closing of any public events that might result in more infection.
The government has already taken steps to try to control the swine flu outbreak that has killed as many as 68 people and infected possibly 1,000 more. Since Friday, officials have canceled hundreds of public events and closed schools for millions of students in and around Mexico City. On Saturday, another 24 suspected cases were reported in the capital city, according to The Associated Press.
Mexicans were encouraged to avoid public places and if the went out to wear masks, known as tapabocas or cover-your-mouths.
In the United States, officials at the C.D.C. said on Saturday that they understood that the outbreak potential in the United States was serious.
“It’s clear that this is widespread,” said Dr. Anne Schuchat, interim deputy director for science and public health program for the C.D.C. said in a teleconference on Saturday. “We do not think we can contain the spread of this virus.”
By Saturday, eight cases of swine flu had been reported in the United States in addition to those in New York: seven in southern California, in San Diego and Imperial Counties, which share a border with Mexico; two in Cibolo, Tex., near San Antonio; and two in Kansas.
In New York City, Dr. Frieden said that 100 to 200 students from St. Francis Prep, which has a student body of 2,700, reported some symptoms of influenza.
“We don’t know if it is spreading from person to person,” he said. “In the cases we have seen, we have seen a very short incubation period. From the time you got exposed to the time you got sick was only one to two to five days.”
Although Dr. Frieden would not confirm whether students recently traveled to Mexico, at least two students interviewed on Saturday said that they knew of other students from the school that went there for Spring Break. On Thursday, about 75 students went to the school’s medical center with symptoms from headaches, to fevers, to burning eyes.
“When kids heard the news that people in Mexico City were dying from it, some kids were getting scared,” said Jack Castronova, 17, a student at the school.
In addition to the school in Fresh Meadows, Dr. Frieden said that health officials were examining 30 children from a day care center in the Bronx had flu-like symptoms. And at least two people who recently returned from Mexico contacted the city health department and said their children had similar symptoms, Dr. Frieden said.
He cautioned that schools can be a place where viruses spread rapidly because children do not always take precautions, like covering their mouths, to contain their germs.
“We will also continue working with hospitals to identify people with serious respiratory symptoms,” Dr. Frieden said.
Jessica Scaperotti, a spokeswoman for the health department, said that hospitals near St. Francis Prep had seen an increase in visits, “but the patients were found to have mild illnesses.”
The United States has a detailed pandemic preparedness plan that was written in 2005 during the early years of the scare over H5N1 bird flu. But one person involved in planning said that federal officials were “not pulling the trigger on any part of it yet.”
Officials are considering moving stockpiles of the flu drug Tamiflu and protective gear like masks and gloves closer to San Diego, San Antonio and other places where the first cases of swine flu were reported in the United States.
Before any aspect of the pandemic plan can be set in motion, one official explained, there has to be some idea how many people in Mexico are infected. Fewer than 100 deaths from pneumonia or flu-like illness in a city of 20 million is not very many.
Most of Mexico’s dead were young, healthy adults and none were over 60 or under 3 years old, the World Healrth Organization said. That alarms health officials because seasonal fluus cause most of their deaths among infants and the bedridden elderly, but pandemic flus often strike the young and healthy the hardest.
The current swine flu outbreak comes at a time when many of the top federal health positions in the United States have not been filled by the Obama adminstration. Dr. Besser is the acting head of the centers, and there is also an acting surgeon general.
A health official and a flu expert who were consulted on planning and who spoke on condition of anonymity to keep from being cut off from consultations said that in recent days they had taken part in several unnecessarily long conference calls with what one called “newbies.”
Teams from the centers have gone to Texas and California and will be helping local officials with case contacts, laboratory testing and other steps. They also will be watching for any sharp increase in emergency room admissions for respiratory problems. In addition, they want to examine whether the very unusual combination of North American swine, human and avian strains with a Eurasian swine strain, is mutating and whether it is becoming more virulent.
If the World Health Organization decides to raise its alert level to 4 from 3, indicating it had found sustained human-to-human transmission of the virus, the United States — whose pandemic alert level is now at zero — might raise its levels. That would include putting emergency rooms and first-responders on alert, making sure they have seasonal flu shots and putting them first in line for any early batches of a vaccine based on the current swine strain.
In addition, raising the alert level could also include closing schools, theaters and ball parks, requiring people to wear masks while on public transportation, banning large gatherings and imposing travel restrictions.
Public officials are usually reluctant to take such steps because of the panic and economic disruption they can cause.
To combat the disease, the centers has already started preparation of a “seed strain” for a swine flu vaccine, weakening the virus until it provides protection without causing disease takes time and careful testing.
lol
Comment