Coralville visitor may have had ‘new’ flu
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A southeastern Iowa female who traveled to Coralville last week is one of the two suspected H1N1 virus cases in the state, health officials said Thursday.
The woman, who attended a meeting at the Quality Inn in Coralville, had recently traveled to Mexico. Pat Blake, a UI Hygienic Laboratory spokeswoman, said she expects Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials to confirm the cases by this morning at the latest.
“If this one comes back positive, it’s not an indication that [the disease is] being transmitted throughout the community,” said Doug Beardsley, the director of the Johnson County Public Health Department. If the case is confirmed, he said, health officials will not recommend canceling international or domestic travel.
The individual — who exhibited flu-like symptoms, such as fever, cough, and diarrhea — traveled through Johnson, Des Moines, and Muscatine Counties, Beardsley said. She is doing well, and neither she nor the other individual, a male, have been hospitalized. The male traveled through Iowa, Scott, and Clinton Counties.
If the two cases are confirmed, Gov. Chet Culver said, he will declare a “public-health disaster” for the state. This means state officials will require quarantines for those infected and send more anti-viral medication across the state.
But health officials said this disaster stage shouldn’t scare Iowans — it means the state will be on a stricter surveillance mode.
“This wouldn’t mean people are quarantined right away,” said Polly Carver-Kimm, an Iowa Department of Public Health spokeswoman. “We’re nowhere near that stage.”
Carver-Kimm said a flu hotline, created Tuesday, has received 381 phone calls. She stressed Iowans should continue to frequently wash their hands and cover their mouths when coughing. If individuals have any of the virus symptoms, they should stay at home and call their doctors.
The Hygienic Laboratory is conducting the virus tests for Iowa, and it has received 319 specimen tubes since April 27, Blake said, including the two possible H1N1 flu cases. After preliminary exams, officials sent the two tubes for testing to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, which received the specimens Thursday morning.
By next week, Blake said she expects the lab will receive the proper equipment to do all the testing in Iowa.
At the UI Employee Health Clinic, clinical nurse specialist Deb Hess said the number of walk-ins and phone calls have increased.
“We’re seeing more people,” she said.
The clinic, located in the UI Hospitals and Clinics, usually treats employees only, but it is now testing patients for the new virus. Four cough stations stand in different spots in the UIHC, armed with boxes of Kleenex, face masks, and gel hand sanitizer. These stands were in the hospital before the flu scare, UIHC spokesman Tom Moore said.
As of April 30, CDC and state officials had confirmed 130 H1N1 cases in 20 states. There has been one death in the United States — on Monday, the virus killed a 22-month-old Mexican boy in Texas.
“Unfortunately, I do expect there will be more deaths,” said Richard Besser, the CDC director, in a press conference. Besser noted that 36,000 people die every year from seasonal flu.
On Wednesday, pubic-health, U.S. government, and World Health Organization officials began calling the virus H1N1 instead of swine flu, after pork producers and agricultural officials said the name led people to believe the flu could be acquired from eating pork.
“We have always felt from the beginning the name ‘swine flu’ was inaccurate and unfair to the industry,” said Ron Birkenholz, the communications director for the Iowa Pork Producers Association.
But the hog industry is still suffering. Since April 24, the price of pork per hundred pounds has dropped $11 in the futures market, said John Lawrence, an Iowa State University agricultural economics professor.
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