Agency review on Swine Flu

Although it is fading in much of the nation as warmer weather comes on, swine flu is causing outbreaks in summer camps just as it has in schools, federal officials said Thursday.
The illness has hospitalized 1,600 Americans, most of them young, and is blamed in 44 deaths, the officials said. It is most persistent in the Northeast, and nearly 90 percent of the flu cases that are tested nationally are the new swine H1N1, not seasonal flu.
The advice to camp administrators and parents is basically the same as for schools, said Dr. Daniel B. Jernigan, deputy director of the flu division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: Camps should be on the alert for sick children, who should be kept home for a week or until 24 hours after symptoms have finished. (Not all camps offer refunds, the American Camp Association noted.) Parents should be prepared to take sick children home on short notice.
Religious camps in Clayton, Ga.; Santa Rosa, Calif.; and Cleveland, Ga., and a Boy Scout camp near Asheville, N.C., all reported probable swine flu cases in local newspapers this week. The C.D.C. also said that many hospitals and clinics were not doing enough to prevent the spread of flu within their walls.
Preliminary analysis of 26 cases of swine flu among health care workers in April and May showed that too few hospital staff members wore masks and other protection, and that patients with the flu were not being identified quickly enough.
“Infectious patients should be identified at the front door,” said Dr. Michael Bell, chief of infection control for the agency. “Identifying them up front is essential.”
When that is done correctly, Dr. Bell said, hospitals act appropriately by putting infectious patients in single rooms, covering their mouth and nose with masks, alerting staff members to wear protection and wash their hands, and doing some procedures in rooms pressurized to make sure no air escapes into corridors.
As if to emphasize the potential risks in hospitals, The Associated Press reported Thursday that 33 premature infants in a hospital in Greensboro, N.C., were getting precautionary flu treatment because a respiratory therapist had worked in the neonatal intensive-care unit after treating an older patient who later tested positive for the virus. None of the children had flu symptoms, a hospital administrator said.