Local News - January 2004

Flu cases drop statewide, not locally

Published January 2, 2004

By Staff and wire reports

————————————

North Carolina health officials say the number of reported flu cases this week dropped to about one-fifth of what they were dealing with just two weeks ago.

Lincoln County, however, has yet to see this change.

“It really hasn’t decreased at all at Lincoln Medical Center,” said Jordan Frye, marketing coordinator at the hospital.

The hospital has reported 117 cases of the flu since the second week of December.

Emergency room visits have shot up since the flu outbreak. An average of 120 visitors come to LMC’s emergency department everyday, many with flu symptoms.

Before December, the emergency department averaged around 75 patients a day.

“The fact that this first wave has been so sustained really has put a burden on the hospital,” said Pete Acker, president and CEO of LMC at the hospital’s December board meeting.

“We’ve been available to the community, but our resources have been taxed.”

The high numbers of flu cases in Lincoln County is expected to drop, Frye said.

Reporting sites around the state show only 238 cases in the week ending Dec. 27 compared to a high of 1,202 for the week ending Dec. 13. There were 500 cases tracked in the week ending Dec. 20.

Health officials say it’s too soon to know if the downward trend will continue and that parents should still get flu shots for their children.

“It remains to be seen if we’re actually done with this,” Durham County health director Brian Letourneau said Thursday. “Kids have been out of school, and people have been traveling, coming in contact with other folks from different parts of the country, and disease transmission occurs in that kind of environment — in airports, visiting other families and so forth.

“We’re in that phase where it could go either way.”

A drop in the frenzy to get the flu vaccine also reflects the decline. Letourneau said only 20 of the 80 doses of pediatric influenza vaccine provided to the health department by the N.C. Immunization Program were used during a clinic Wednesday. More vaccine has arrived, he added.

The vaccine is typically offered to healthy children 6 months to 2 years old, and for children with chronic diseases who are 2 to 3 years old.

Eight children have died from flu-related illness this season in North Carolina. Annually an average of 15 children in the state die from the flu.

Last year’s flu season didn’t get under way in earnest in the state until the third week in January, peaking at the end of February and dissipating almost completely during the following three weeks.

——–———————

© 2001 Lincoln Times-News  

Terms and Conditions