PORT ANGELES — After swearing in a new colleague — appointee John Nutter — Olympic Medical Center commissioners this week got more good news from public health officer Dr. Tom Locke.
Swine flu, also known as 2009 H1N1 influenza, has not reached the North Olympic Peninsula, Locke said at the board meeting Wednesday.
It is not a pandemic, and schools will not close because of it, Locke said.
“So we have a new virus. It’s spread in multiple countries, but it’s yet not widespread within those counties,” said Locke, health officer for Clallam and Jefferson counties and a specialist in preventive medicine.
Swearing in
Before Locke’s briefing to the hospital board, attorney Craig Miller swore in Nutter as the seventh commissioner.
The commission appointed Nutter, 38, to replace Cindy Witham, who resigned on March 4.
Nutter is a Port Angeles police officer and a former OMC finance director.
Nutter’s term expires at the end of the year. He said he intends to run in the November general election to complete the final two years of Witham’s term.
Locke said that “most of the information we have is that it will become more widespread in the United States.”
The Washington Department of Health said on its Web site, www.doh.wa.gov/, Thursday that 33 cases of swine flu have been confirmed in the state: 25 in King County, six in Snohomish County and one each in Pierce and Spokane counties.
No cases are suspected or confirmed in Clallam or Jefferson counties.
The federal Centers for Disease Control said that 896 cases of swine flu have been confirmed in the United States.
Most cases mild
So far, most cases have been mild, Locke said. Symptoms of swine flu are similar to seasonal flu, which kills one in 1,000.
Health officials have reached the decision to keep schools open, even in the face of confirmed cases of swine flu, because they would have to close every school for two to four weeks.
Swine flu is not severe enough to justify that step, Locke said.
“We’ve abandoned the strategy of school closures simply because it won’t work,” Locke told the board.
“The virus is too mild, and it’s too broadly spread. We cannot test people fast enough to really know which schools have cases in them and which do not.”
“So school closure is off the table, but not because we’re sounding the all clear,” Locke said.
“We’re ramping up infection control in hospitals, medical facilities and really emphasizing the need for students and workers who are sick to stay home. That’s actually our most effective way to control this.”
Clallam County on Wednesday received the first 2,500 of 10,000 doses of antiviral medication from the Strategic National Stockpile. The stockpile was created to deal with bio-terrorist threats and pandemic flu.
By today, health officials hoped to get the first batch to local pharmacies and tribes, along with prescribing guidelines.
The greatest benefit of the antiviral medication is for high-risk patients and health-care workers, Locke said. He said the benefit for people with strong immune systems may not be noticeable.
“For most people, we predict, this is going to be a mild illness, lasting a few days,” Locke said.
Younger more at risk
Recent lab results show patients younger than 40 are more likely to have swine flu than patients older than 40.
“It’s too early to draw conclusions, but it seems as if the older population, and I’m sure people that are 41 are not going to like being referred to as older, but they seem to have less susceptibility to this,” Locke said.
“We’re not sure if that’s because the virus hasn’t gotten to them yet or they have immunity from some past circulating strain of influenza or some past vaccine . . . We’re learning more about this day by day.”
The timing of the outbreak is favorable in the Northern Hemisphere because the flu season is coming to an end.
Avian flu worse
While Avian H5N1 flu has fallen off the radar, it remains a much more dangerous infection than swine flu, Locke said.
“It’s by no means gone away,” he said.
Board president Jim Leskinovitch asked Locke to elaborate on the decision to keep schools open.
“Schools are the virus factories, so closing down the factory is a very effective way to control it,” Locke said.
“But if you want to do it selectively, you need a way of distinguishing cases, either based on unique systems or a rapid test.
“We have over 1,000 schools (in Washington), so there’s no way we could monitor those. For schools, it was an all or nothing thing . . . Low severity, combined with the fact it’s just not an effective tactic.”
The next update on swine flu will be Tuesday morning, Locke said.
Meanwhile, Volunteers in Medicine of the Olympics executive director Larry Little reported that visits to the free clinic have nearly doubled in the past year.
There were 284 visits in April, compared with 150 in April 2008.
There were 1,945 total visits in 2008, compared with a possible 3,000 in 2009, Little said.
“We’re seeing a dramatic increase in the number of visits,” he said.
Ninety-one percent of the clinic’s patients are uninsured.
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Reporter Rob Ollikainen can be reached at 360-417-3537 or at rob.ollikainen@peninsuladailynews.com.
