Flu rages across country, but Morrow County faring well

By Randa Wag­ner -
The flu bug is wreak­ing havoc this sea­son across the nation, over­whelm­ing emer­gency room staff in some areas to the point of set­ting up mobile tents to han­dle the over­flow.
While 47 states are report­ing wide­spread flu activ­ity, Ohio is cer­tainly no excep­tion. Mor­row County, how­ever, isn’t far­ing too badly so far.
“We’re not see­ing a higher num­ber of patients, but we are see­ing a higher num­ber of patients for flu symp­toms,” says Emer­gency Depart­ment Man­ager Teresa Roe. “Some days are very busy, and some aren’t.”
Con­nie Mat­tingly, Employee Health Nurse and Infec­tion Pre­ven­tion­ist, says in the fourth quar­ter of 2011 (Oct. through Dec.), their lab ran 17 tests for influenza.
“Of those, zero were pos­i­tive,” she states. “In the fourth quar­ter of 2012, we ran 107 tests (an 89% increase), of which 20 were pos­i­tive for type A influenza and 9 were pos­i­tive for type B.”
Though it’s essen­tially the same virus, she says, Type ‘A’ is the ‘king’ that can be ‘sub-typed’ (i.e. H1N1) and typ­i­cally comes from birds, swine, etc. Type ‘B’ is strictly trans­mit­ted human-to-human, deter­mined by the results of a nasal swab that shows a par­tic­u­lar anti­gen that the body is pro­duc­ing to fight that strain of flu.
Symp­toms are the same for both: fever, body aches, sore throat, cough, nau­sea, and vom­it­ing.
“If you are sick enough to come to the emer­gency room to be seen, we’ll do the swab to test which type you may have,” Mat­tingly says. That infor­ma­tion is entered into a data­base so the infor­ma­tion can go to the county and state for their sta­tis­tics.
“We will treat you with an anti-viral med­ica­tion,” she says. “Most com­mon is TAMIFLU (oseltamivir phos­phate), and we encour­age lots of flu­ids, bed rest and FREQUENT hand hygiene. For those peo­ple who don’t have the flu, they (likely) have a bad cold that can behave like flu.”
Peo­ple tend to use the word ‘flu’ as a generic term, Mat­tingly says, because they have flu-like symp­toms. If you think you had a ‘stom­ach flu’ you may have had a bad cold and not influenza. Typ­i­cally with influenza, the patient has a very high tem­per­a­ture that usu­ally lasts for more than one day.
Roe says if you test neg­a­tive for influenza A and B, what you do have is still very con­ta­gious.
“It’s a mat­ter of: if you don’t feel well, stay home,” she urges. “If you are sick, come to the emer­gency room. Oth­er­wise, stay home to pre­vent oth­ers from catch­ing it. It’s so eas­ily spread.”
Acute Care Man­ager Carol Vail says MCH hasn’t had very many patients actu­ally admit­ted with an influenza diag­no­sis, though some have been admit­ted with flu-type symp­toms. If they are debil­i­tated, espe­cially the elderly or some­one with a pre-existing lung con­di­tion, they are gen­er­ally going to get admit­ted.
Mat­tingly explains peo­ple in age or illness-specific groups (i.e. dia­betes, heart, COPD, kid­ney, over the age of 65, or young chil­dren) are the groups they worry most about, as they are most vul­ner­a­ble and have longer last­ing effects.
“When those patients are admit­ted, we put them in iso­la­tion,” Vail says. “Vis­i­tors for the patients must wear masks and gowns, no mat­ter how much pre­vi­ous expo­sure they may have had to the patient. These viruses can affect the staff, too.”
Kelly Hand, Pub­lic Infor­ma­tion Offi­cer for the Mor­row County Health Dept., con­firmed 5 cases of influenza-associated hos­pi­tal­iza­tions in the county from Sept. 2012 through this past Mon­day. Dur­ing the same time period last year, there were zero influenza-associated hos­pi­tal­iza­tions. There was one in March and one in April, 2012, the only two of the ‘sea­son.’ Those results included the H3n2V virus. Hand adds these num­bers do not include how many peo­ple might have been tested at doctor’s offices and sent home with med­ica­tions.
Cough­ing and touch­ing sur­faces are the chief con­trib­u­tors to spread­ing cold and flu germs. Roe says when it’s ‘going around the house’ in a fam­ily, by the time the last per­son catches it, the first per­son — who is now feel­ing bet­ter — can get the symp­toms again.
“There are so many strains of the flu and flu-like ill­nesses, you can get sick more than once,” she explains.
Roe real­izes it’s hard to stay home and rest when you feel you must go to work. For those who can stay home, how do you know when it’s safe to go back to work or school?
“How do you feel?” asks Roe. “Do you have a fever? Are you dizzy when you stand up? Are you cough­ing con­stantly? It’s a mat­ter of let­ting your body heal.”
Roe says peo­ple come to the hos­pi­tal expect­ing to get an antibi­otic and get bet­ter. “If it’s viral — which a major­ity of this is — they aren’t going to get an antibi­otic. Antibi­otics are for bac­te­r­ial infec­tions.”
She says viral infec­tions aren’t always affected by antibi­otics, and admin­is­ter­ing them when they shouldn’t be is how multi-drug-resistant ill­nesses develop.
“We have patients who get quite upset when they aren’t given an antibi­otic. Physi­cians know when to admin­is­ter them.”
Roe says if you have nau­sea, vom­it­ing, diar­rhea, and/or fever, don’t go to work. If you’re dehy­drated and can’t keep any­thing in, give your­self clear liq­uids — Pepsi and Moun­tain Dew are NOT con­sid­ered clear liq­uids, she says. WATER is the ideal clear liq­uid, and don’t ‘chug’ it… it needs to come slowly and in sips. Oth­er­wise your stom­ach won’t tol­er­ate it. When you can tol­er­ate water and want food, start with the ‘B.R.A.T.’ diet: bananas, rice, apple­sauce and toast. No milk or dairy prod­ucts, espe­cially when you have diar­rhea.
What can peo­ple do to pro­tect them­selves from catch­ing the flu?
“Wash their hands,” Mat­tingly says bluntly. “When some­body coughs, Influenza ‘A’ par­ti­cles can land on hard sur­faces and live for hours.”
For instance, when you walk into a store after some­one who has been cough­ing and han­dles the same carts, cooler han­dles, and items the cough­ing shop­per did, you can pick up the germs. Then when you touch your eyes, face or mouth with those same hands, voila! You now have the virus in your sys­tem.
“It’s very eas­ily spread,” Mat­tingly says. “So wash your hands and clean your sur­faces.”
If the bug has already struck at your house, encour­age the sick fam­ily mem­ber to cover their cough, and have every­one wash their hands fre­quently or use hand san­i­tizer. Using Clorox wipes on sur­faces helps as well.
Health pro­fes­sion­als rec­om­mend get­ting the flu vac­cine in late Sep­tem­ber or early Octo­ber so it will last about six months when it’s at its peak. MCH admin­is­ters an atten­u­ated vac­cine: a dead virus. (It has been incu­bated but then killed.)
“If you are a younger per­son, they have the live nasal virus, which gets into a person’s sys­tem faster,” Mat­tingly explains, “so your body can rec­og­nize it and start build­ing up anti­gens.”
With an atten­u­ated virus, admin­is­tered by injec­tion, you can­not get the flu from the vac­cine. If you do get influenza, Mat­tingly says, it means you were exposed some time in the last 10 days. Flu shot recip­i­ents should also expect 10–14 days before you are fully pro­tected. Every year there are new strains of Influenza A, and they may not be cov­ered by the flu vac­cine you took.
“It’s not too late to get your flu shot!” Hand empha­sizes. “We have flu shots for those peo­ple 6 months and older here at the Health Depart­ment.”
Those inter­ested in get­ting a flu shot can call the Health Depart­ment at 419–947-1545, ext 327. The cost of the vac­cine varies on the type requested, but Hand says no one will be turned away for inabil­ity to pay. Pric­ing infor­ma­tion can be found on the health department’s web­site at http://www.morrowcountyhealth.org.
­­­“Be smart, vig­i­lant and proac­tive so we don’t spread it,” Roe advises. “There are peo­ple who can’t fight it off.”

Posted by Taylor Kaser on Jan 16 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.