60 kids with flu at emergency per day as Swine Flu takes toll on B.C. healthcare and schools
Pharmacist Tan Ha says prescriptions for Tamiflu are up.
By Salim Jiwa
VICTORIA – (Update) Between 50 to 60 kids are turning up daily at B.C. Children’s Hospital with flu like symptoms and the government confirms 33 people have been admitted to hospitals for severe Swine Flu in just one week while a ninth fatality is being reported from the novel virus.
The hospital flood of Swine Flu patients is just one of a number of indicators that B.C. is now in the midst of a Swine Flu epidemic while 200,000 shots of vaccine are still sitting in storage in Vancouver waiting for federal approval for distribution.
The Vancouver School Board said some schools are reporting up to 16 per cent absenteeism for flu like illness. Among them is Vancouver Technical Secondary.
A ninth Swine Flu fatality was confirmed Tuesday in British Columbia by the ministry of health. Hospitals are already getting their highest wave of admissions since the beginning of the pandemic. Swine Flu was first observed in Mexico in April.
At B.C. Children’s Hospital in Vancouver, 50 to 60 patients are coming in to the emergency department per day complaining of influenza like illness, ILI, assumed to be Swine Flu in most cases, according Dr. Niranjan Kissoon, the hospital’s Senior Medical Director of Acute and Critical Care.
Dr. Kissoon - 50 to 60 kids at emergency per day.
“It is higher than we expected at this time of the year, I’d say it is 20 per cent higher, ” said Kissoon in an interview. “We are going with the diagnosis of influenza like illness, there is no point in further testing unless they are sick enough to be admitted.”
“In terms of numbers we have 50 to 60 coming in (to emergency). We have contingency plans so extra staff are in that area,” he said. “We don’t want to mix them with others – the thing we have to worry about is cross infection.”
Children with flu like illness are treated in a separate room to prevent the spread of the virus. Children with underlying disease are treated with medications including Tamiflu he said.
Across B.C. 33 people have been hospitalized in several regions but mostly in the Vancouver area and the Fraser Health Region, the B.C. Centres for Disease Control (BCCDC) said.
This is the highest number of people hospitalized in a week’s time frame but the numbers have been growing for the past four weeks. Six of those 33 have been admitted to ICU.
“We are in the second wave of flu so we’re seeing an increased number of severe cases and hospitalizations,” said Ritinder Harry, a spokeswoman for BCCDC. “33 have been hospitalized in the last week and six have been admitted to ICU.”
“Up to now we’ve had nine people dead, eight of them had underlying conditions and one case did not have underlying conditions,” she said about the rising fatality rate seen in the past four weeks.
Harry said complications of flu, even during seasonal flu, are more likely with people with underlying medical conditions. However, the demographics of people affected by Swine Flu are different with younger people being hit the hardest.
Hospital emergency rooms are now full of sick people and doctors are reporting a wave of patients coming in with flu like illness believed to be Swine Flu.
Medical Services Plan billings show a historic peak for claims by doctors treating patients for influenza like illness, according to bulletins issued by BCCDC.
Almost 200,000 shots of Swine Flu vaccine are still sitting in storage at the BCCDC because the federal government has not approved its distribution.
Harry said she could not provide a precise timetable for federal approval but anticipates getting the go-ahead by early November.
Pharmacist Tan Ha, at the Peoples Drug Mart located at Champlain Mall in Vancouver, said he has seen an increase in prescriptions for Tamiflu.
“We’ve had an increase in prescriptions for children and adults,” Ha said. “One year ago getting a prescription for Tamiflu would have been very rare.”
He said pharmacies have large stocks of Tamiflu available. The government has distributed free supplies of Tamiflu to pharmacies and all people need to get the anti-viral medications is a prescription with Tamiflu being given away for free.
Several school within the jurisdiction the Vancouver School Board are reporting absenteeism rates of up to 16 per cent, according to Vancouver School Board chairwoman Patti Bacchus.
She said several elementary schools have reported absenteeism rates of up to 15 per cent and medical authorities have been informed of the outbreaks of flu like illness.
Vancouver Technical Secondary School has reported that 16 per cent of its students are sick at home. She said the advice from medical officials is to keep schools open despite the outbreaks.
* Since Oct. 13, there have been 33 new severe cases of H1N1 identified in B.C. – thirteen in Fraser Health, twelve in Vancouver Coastal Health, six in Interior Health and two on Vancouver Island – with two new deaths, both in Fraser Health,” said the ministry of health in a bulletin issued at noon on Tuesday.
* Since Oct. 13, there have been 33 new severe cases of H1N1 identified in B.C., with two new deaths. In total, BC Centre for Disease Control (BCCDC) has confirmed 111 severe H1N1 cases in British Columbia since April 2009. This total is for the period from April to October 20.
The 33 persons admitted this week represent almost a third of all hospitalizations.
Surveillance data released by the BCCDC shows that of the 111 hospitalized since the start of the pandemic in April, 9 were aged under the age of two years, 25 were aged 2 to 19 years, 41 were aged between 20 and 39, 30 patients were 40 to 64 years of age while those over 64 accounted for five admissions. Of those admitted, 54 had pneumonia, 30 were admitted to ICU, 21 were on ventilators and 62 required oxygen.
Copyright 2009, Vancouverite News Service. Use this article on your blog or website for just $5. News organizations pay $25. To reproduce or distribute, click: http://vancouverite.icopyright.com
Related articles:
- B.C. hospital emergency rooms flooded with Swine Flu patients
- B.C. Swine Flu death toll at 30, 141 more hospitalized
- Canadian Swine Flu toll reaches 329, eight more die in B.C.
- New deaths across Canada as Swine Flu toll reaches 357
Posted by Salim Jiwa
on Oct 20 2009. Filed under Featured.
You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0.
You can leave a response or trackback to this entry
[...] 60 Kids With Flu At Emergency Per Day as Swine Flu Takes it’s Toll on BC Healthcare and School… [...]
Keep your sick kids home. Teacher must send kids to the office and then they must be put into isolation till such time they can go home. The vacine has AS03 in it this has been linked to gulf war syndrome a lupus like illness. AS03 has not met FDA aproval. A shot with no AS03 is available for kids under 3 an pregnant women. We should be able to test if we have H1N1.
presently this is not possible unless admitted to a hospital.
This flu is just getting rolling now, so most of the misery and deaths have yet to come. People won’t understand the impact until one of their loved ones can’t get adequate treatment for serious illness because all the doctors, nurses, ventilators, hospital beds are tied up, and the antibiotic isn’t touching the pneumonia infections. This is hitting younger people. While the death of thousands of elderly in nursing homes every year is very sad, it does not compare the same way to the death of pregnant moms and children, or younger adults with their whole life ahead of them. People should be demanding the health ministers resignations over the vaccine fiasco. I have an at risk son who suddenly could not get the seasonal vaccine, is too sick for the pneumococcal vaccine, and won’t need the swine vaccine because it looks like he already has had the disease. If it doesn’t turn to pneumonia, I guess we’ve dodged the bullet, but there are many many others who won’t. They won’t remotely have enough resources to look after the very sick in hospital. What a mess.
Agreed. It is absolutely incredible that people should suggest that the death toll is not comparable to one illness or some other statistic. Just because people die of other causes in greater numbers does not mean we should not do everything in our power to prevent a fatality. In this regard, when all is said and done, and we take stock of what happened, it is our belief that the Canadian minister of health and a number of school officials along with the minister of health for B.C. will have a lot to answer for. It will take a few tragedies at the school level to touch off a public uproar.
When you reference the number of nine deaths – is that from the initial outbreak last April? It is very difficult to get a true picture without some frame of reference for the time we are talking about. How many people in BC die from “the flu” or complications brought on by a flu to other medical conditions in an average year?
Since the outbreak in April, 9 people have died. Your other question is obviously an attempt to portray the number of deaths as insignificant compared to the annual toll from seasonal flu. You would be comparing apples and oranges. You can argue that far more people die from other causes. The demographics of people dying from Swine Flu are different and Swine Flu has not run its course and it is difficult to say how many will die. The mortality rate is slightly higher than seasonal flu and it affects younger people more than the traditional seasonal flu impact. The world’s population has absolutely no immunity to this novel virus, no one knows how or if it will mutate and they are still studying the behaviour of the H1N1 virus. Further, unlike seasonal flu, there is nothing seasonal about Swine Flu. So its full impact on mortality will not be known for some time. How sick people are becoming from this new flu is hard to believe until you talk to some of the victims.