Swine flu cases suspected in Miami-Dade April 30, 2009

BY FRED TASKER
ftasker@MiamiHerald.com

Twenty possible but unconfirmed swine flu cases have been identified in Miami-Dade County, and an undetermined number in Broward, health officials said Wednesday. But it could be several days before the test results come back to confirm them.
The cases are considered ”suspect” because the patients have flu symptoms and have traveled to Mexico or other areas where the swine flu has been identified, said Dr. Vincent Conte, chief epidemiologist with the Miami-Dade Health Department.

”If they have fever and respiratory symptoms and they’ve traveled, they meet the definition [for testing],” Conte said.

Also on Wednesday, the World Health Organization took the unprecedented step of raising the infectious disease alert level to Phase 5, setting the stage for increased efforts to combat the infection.

The virus ”must be taken seriously because of its ability to spread to every country in the world,” WHO director-general Dr. Margaret Chan said at a news conference. Phase 5 is considered a situation in which the likelihood of a pandemic ”is very high or inevitable,” said Dr. Keiji Fukuda, assistant director-general.

The increased level came as the swine flu outbreak in the United States spread to four more states overnight, bringing the total to at least 92 cases. Texas authorities also announced the first U.S. death from the new virus, a 23-month-old who died in a Houston hospital.

LOCAL CASES

The Miami-Dade viral samples, collected over the past few days, have been sent to the Florida Department of Health lab in Tampa, he said. Virologists there will analyze them to see if they can identify them as regular seasonal flu. If they can’t, they will send them on to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta for final analysis. Results might take five days or more, they said, because of a backlog of cases in Atlanta.

Suspected cases in Broward are also sent to a state lab in Miami, but Broward County Health Department spokeswoman Candy Sims wouldn’t discuss numbers.

”There may have been many samples submitted for testing, but that’s all I can say,” she said.

The Dade health department is not seeking to quarantine the suspect individuals.

”We’re asking their families and doctors to have them remain in voluntary isolation,” said Dr. Fermin Leguen, an epidemiologist for the health department.

He said the individuals were identified by private physicians, hospitals and health clinics.

”The CDC is the only lab in the country that can do the analysis, and they’re inundated with samples from the whole country,” Conte said.

The boy who died in Texas was from Mexico City, and had traveled to Matamoros on a commercial flight with his family to visit relatives in Brownsville, Texas. The boy, who had an unspecified ”underlying health condition,” developed symptoms shortly after arriving and was taken to a hospital in Brownsville before being transferred to Houston.

Arizona, Massachusetts, Michigan and Nevada joined the list of states with new cases. Texas said its total has climbed to 16 cases, New York has 51 and California has 15. A Marine at the Twentynine Palms, Calif., base has been confirmed to have the virus, the Marine Corps said Wednesday. About 30 men at the base who have come into contact with him have been quarantined.

New cases also have been reported in Canada, the United Kingdom, Austria and New Zealand, among other countries.

”It’s clear that the virus is spreading, and we don’t see any evidence of it slowing down at this point,” WHO’s Fukuda said at a morning news conference in Geneva.

Mexican health officials said the number of confirmed cases of swine flu had risen to 49, from the previous official tally of 26. Mexican authorities say seven people have died.

FEAR SPREADS

At Miami’s Jackson Memorial Hospital, about 30 people with flu symptoms had showed up by mid-day Wednesday at the emergency room seeking treatment, according to Dr. Yolangel Hernandez Suarez, the hospital’s chief administration officer.

The patients were given masks and expedited service.

The situation frightened Beatriz Suarez, who visits the hospital up to four times a week for her 3-year-old’s dialysis treatments. The mother of three fears contracting flu could be fatal for her son, Luis Anthony Suarez, who was born without a working kidney.

”I’m frightened. It’s worse for my children. They touch everything, so I keep washing his hands,” she said.

Doctors at Broward General Medical Center in Fort Lauderdale have seen an increase in the number of parents bringing their kids in to the emergency room over the last couple of days.

Some are coming in with runny noses or basic cold symptoms, said Dr. Marc Arel, who works in the hospital’s pediatric emergency department.

”Some people aren’t coming in with anything at all,” he said. “They just want to be sure.”

Miami Herald staff writers Hannah Sampson and Jose Pagliery contributed to this report, which was supplemented by wire services.

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