Flu is an old enemy.
Hippocrates first described people suffering from the telltale symptoms around 300 BC: aches, fever and respiratory trouble.
Two-thousand-four-hundred years later, influenza is rabid in Colorado, which with 20 other states is experiencing a serious flu outbreak.
The disease is rife in Durango. A Mercy Regional Medical Center news release said it is treating five to six inpatients for flu every day.
San Juan Basin Health Department’s Joe Fowler said based on anecdotal reports from colleagues and doctors, “We, like much of the country, are seeing a lot of flu.
“We’ve certainly seen more cases of people hospitalized for flu this year than last year,” he said.
Since flu season began, 1,190 Coloradans have tested positive for influenza as of the week ending Jan. 18, according to a statewide flu report to be published today by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.
Lisa Miller, a state epidemiologist with state agency, said in the same time period, only five cases of people testing positive for influenza in La Plata County have been reported to the state.
But she said that number likely understated the local incidence of influenza, because doctors frequently make flu diagnoses without performing the blood test, and there’s a lag between hospital testing and state reports.
The numbers for La Plata County may soon change, as local health-care providers report waiting rooms awash in influenza.
“I don’t doubt at all what your providers are telling you,” said Miller. “There’s a lot of pieces that more fully describe influenza in the community. Statewide data is just a snapshot.”
Holly Andersen, clinical coordinator for Durango Urgent Care, said her staff was “definitely seeing an increase in flu.”
“There have been a lot of positive swabs in the last few weeks,” she said.
Many people confuse colds with influenza because symptoms – aches, pains and general respiratory misery – are similar.
“But what really differentiates flu from the common cold is all-over body aches and a high temperature,” Andersen said.
David Mink, director of clinical operations for Animas Surgical Hospital, said staff members have seen an uptick in flu since late December.
“We’re not a big, big player in the flu world, but we’ve had a couple of patients test positive,” he said.
“There is flu out there. Hospitals in general take this all very seriously. We require all our employees – nurses, doctors, clerical employees – and all our contractors who come in and supply us with surgery equipment or work on our copiers to have the flu shot to protect our patients and ourselves,” he said.
Fowler said there was no way to track how many La Plata County residents had received flu vaccinations this year. He said the department itself has given about 1,000 vaccinations, but more people likely got vaccinated through their doctor’s office, a local pharmacy or work.
Every public-health official contacted for this story urged people to get vaccinated. According to the Centers for Disease Control, nationally, fewer than half of children and adults were vaccinated by early flu season in November 2013, with only 41 percent of children 6 months to 17 years old and 39 percent of adults 18 years and older getting vaccinated.
Fowler said the flu season hasn’t peaked because influenza tends to thrive in low temperatures and spreads easily in winter as people close windows and stay in confined, indoor spaces.
“If the virus is exposed to higher temperatures or direct sunlight, it doesn’t survive very long. But the flu season could go on well into February, into spring. If people have not been vaccinated, we still recommend that people get vaccinated,” he said.
Because influenza mutates so quickly, the flu vaccine is good only for a year.
According to the CDC, this year’s predominant flu strain is H1N1, the same strain that caused pandemics in 2009 and 2010.
Fowler said H1N1 was unique because most flu strains strike children and the elderly hardest, but H1N1 hits healthy adults hard, too.
“The predominant strain circulating is H1N1, but it was contained in this year’s vaccine and is a good match,” said Guy Walton, Mercy’s infection prevention specialist in a news release.
cmcallister@durangoherald.com
Avoid the flu
Health-care providers and public health officials had lots of practical advice to try to stay healthy:
Don’t cough into your hand out of an outdated notion of politeness: cough into your sleeve or a tissue, than throw the tissue away.
Despite the fact that the average person unconsciously touches his or her face more than 2,000 times a day, try to cut down on excessive hand-face contact.
In winter, clean household surfaces more often than you might in summer.
If someone in your family is sick with flu, quarantine him or her.
If someone in your family gets really sick with flu – he or she experiences trouble breathing, turns bluish, continuously throw up, drinks a lot of liquids without urinating or the symptoms seem to get better, but then get much worse – take the person to the doctor’s office or the hospital.
If someone has underlying conditions such as diabetes, asthma or heart disease, the risk of flu increases.
If you or someone you know has the flu, stay home for 24 hours – after the symptoms resolve.
