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Hospitals: Don't visit if you're sick
Unlike some Twin Cities hospitals, both St. Joseph's Medical Center and Cuyuna Regional Medical Center are not restricting visitors because of the flu but advise people to not visit patients if they are sick and don't bring children into these hospital settings if it isn't necessary.
Roxanne Wilson, chief nursing officer at St. Joseph's, said so far hospital staff are seeing fewer visitors anyway.
"We've seen that the community as a whole is responding well and using common sense and not coming in sick," said Wilson. "We're feeling the cooperation we're getting at this point is resulting in the same thing (as a hospital-wide restriction on visitors), and we've talked to patients so they can talk to their visitors and we've posted signage."
"I think we're using good common sense and we're seeing the public use good common sense, too," added Dr. Peter Henry, medical consultant for Crow Wing County Public Health and medical director of the emergency room at St. Joseph's Medical Center in Brainerd. "Young women who come here to deliver are not going to let sick people in the room."- Jodie Tweed, staff writer
Flu-like illnesses hitting schools
Todd Lyscio, Brainerd Community Education director, said the Brainerd School District has notified the state Department of Health when a school building has had three or more students sick with flu-like symptoms in a classroom or more than 5 percent of the building population out sick, which is by now most of the schools in the district.
Here is a breakdown of the number of students home sick with flu-like symptoms either last Wednesday (the district did not have school Thursday or Friday) or Monday and the percentage of that school building's student population:
Baxter: 20 students, or 4 percent.
Garfield: Fewer than 5 students, or about 1 percent.
Lowell: 28 students, or 9 percent.
Nisswa: 23 students, or 8 percent.
Harrison: 45 students, or 17 percent.
Riverside: 83 students, or 15 percent.
Forestview: 240 students, or 12 percent.
BHS South Campus: 25 students, or 5 percent.
BHS: No information was available.
Lincoln Education Center and the Area Learning Center have seen small numbers of students out sick with flu-like symptoms at this point, said Lyscio. - Jodie Tweed, staff writer
Flu still hardest on the young
Swine flu continues to be most dangerous to kids and younger adults and is largely bypassing the elderly, according to the latest and most solid government health information.
Health officials on Tuesday released figures for swine flu hospitalizations and deaths for the seven weeks since the beginning of September. The information comes from 28 states.
It showed more than half of all hospitalizations were people 24 and younger; more than a quarter were ages 5 to 18 years.
"Essentially, this is still a young person's disease," said Dr. Anne Schuchat of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Swine flu deaths were concentrated in young and middle-aged adults. A third of all deaths were people ages 25 through 49; another third were 50 to 64.
Only 12 percent of deaths occurred in elderly. That's a stark contrast to the roughly 90 percent of deaths in the elderly from seasonal flu, Schuchat said at a Tuesday press conference.
"It's almost completely reversed," said Schuchat, who heads the CDC's National Center for Immunization and Respiratory Diseases.
The figures are similar to what the CDC saw in the spring, she said.
Many people 55 and older have some degree of immunity to the swine flu virus, perhaps from exposure decades ago to a similar virus or vaccine. But the ability of the swine flu virus to attack deep in the lungs seems to also make it more dangerous to some of the younger people who are infected, CDC officials say.
The latest figures show about 5,000 hospitalizations in 27 states for lab-confirmed swine flu, and about 300 deaths in 28 states. - Mike Stobbe, Associated Press medical writer
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