Washington County hospitals see bump in worried patients, even as officials tamp down Swine Flu concerns

Local emergency rooms are seeing a small increase in worried patients, but no flood of flu victims

By Christian Gaston

The Forest Grove News-Times, May 4, 2009, Updated Oct 30, 2009

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Washington County confirmed two cases of Swine Flu Tuesday, just as state and federal officials said the flu was similar to standard flu bugs and hasn't so far created the national health scare that some epidemiologists worried about last week.

Officials with the Forest Grove School District announced Sunday that the district would close schools for two days after a student at Cornelius Elementary showed signs of possible infection by the H1N1 virus, commonly known as swine flu.

Cornelius Elementary will remain closed for the rest of the week, even as federal officials said closing schools was no longer a useful strategy since the flu seems to already have spread through the United States.

The number of confirmed cases of the virus jumped from 279 to 403 nationwide between Monday and Tuesday, but no new fatalities were reported, and infections have resulted in few hospitalizations.

In Mexico, officials there reported that reported infections were slowing, with 822 infections confirmed and 29 deaths.

While the announcement of possible new infections have drawn strong responses from public health officials in the County, the infection aren't cause for greater alarm than other flu infections, with County officials encouraging sick people to wash their hands, and stay home from work to prevent infection.

At Tuality Healthcare's emergency rooms in Hillsboro and Forest Grove, the doors aren't busting down with patients concerned they have the new flu virus, said Brian Costa, a Tuality spokesman.

The emergency rooms are experiencing about a 10 percent uptick, many of those who are visiting are more likely to be worried sick than truly ailing.

Costa said federal guidelines, which have changed rapidly during the week, now call for testing only in severe cases where someone will likely be hospitalized with flu-like symptoms.

"Someone who isn’t sick enough to be hospitalized isn’t sick enough to be swabbed," Costa said.

Gil Muñoz, CEO of Virginia Garcia Memorial Health Clinic, said none of their sites throughout Washington County were particularly busy Monday.

Instead, most patients were calling into the clinics to get more information.

"We anticipated that we might see an increase in patients today, particularly regarding the news of the school closures, but we really didn’t see a dramatic increase in patients," Muñoz said. "We were busy today as we normally would be on a Monday and we’re fielding a lot of calls."

Both hospitals are using the same precautions they do during seasonal flu. Sometimes patients are isolated in a severe case to reduce the spread of flu throughout the hospital.

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