Shiloh
Editor, Senior Moderator
Source: http://www.hutchinsonleader.com/news/government-public-safety/preparing-pandemic-8757
Preparing for a pandemic
July 1, 2008 - 11:37am ? Jorge Sosa
If a pandemic flu outbreak strikes the U.S., Ridgewater College will be a hive of activity. The school?s Hutchinson campus will be the site of an emergency operations center for McLeod, Meeker and Sibley counties.
It will also be the site for mass immunizations, as public health, law enforcement, emergency responders and safety officials learned last Thursday (June 26).
According to Sibley County Public Health Director Allie Freidrichs, vaccines will be hard to come by at first. It will likely take six months to develop a vaccine to combat whatever strain of flu is spreading. Public health officials will have to make difficult ethical decisions about who should get the vaccine first, Freidrichs said.
The first people to get vaccinated, Freidrichs said, must be ?mission critical? employees who are at risk because their daily work would bring them into contact with flu victims. These include people providing direct patient care and on the front lines of responding to the sick.
Based on statistics from previous worldwide pandemic flu outbreaks in 1918, 1957 and 1968, health officials believe one-third of McLeod County residents will become ill. About half of those would likely seek medical care from hospitals, meaning Hutchinson Community Hospital might see 159 cases per day, in addition to people who seek care from clinics.
Hutchinson Community Hospital would have only one bed available for every 10 people who need care, according to Freidrichs.
For more on this story, see the Leader's July 1 print edition.
(Jorge Sosa is a staff writer for the Hutchinson Leader. He can be reached at sosa@hutchinsonleader.com)
Preparing for a pandemic
July 1, 2008 - 11:37am ? Jorge Sosa
If a pandemic flu outbreak strikes the U.S., Ridgewater College will be a hive of activity. The school?s Hutchinson campus will be the site of an emergency operations center for McLeod, Meeker and Sibley counties.
It will also be the site for mass immunizations, as public health, law enforcement, emergency responders and safety officials learned last Thursday (June 26).
According to Sibley County Public Health Director Allie Freidrichs, vaccines will be hard to come by at first. It will likely take six months to develop a vaccine to combat whatever strain of flu is spreading. Public health officials will have to make difficult ethical decisions about who should get the vaccine first, Freidrichs said.
The first people to get vaccinated, Freidrichs said, must be ?mission critical? employees who are at risk because their daily work would bring them into contact with flu victims. These include people providing direct patient care and on the front lines of responding to the sick.
Based on statistics from previous worldwide pandemic flu outbreaks in 1918, 1957 and 1968, health officials believe one-third of McLeod County residents will become ill. About half of those would likely seek medical care from hospitals, meaning Hutchinson Community Hospital might see 159 cases per day, in addition to people who seek care from clinics.
Hutchinson Community Hospital would have only one bed available for every 10 people who need care, according to Freidrichs.
For more on this story, see the Leader's July 1 print edition.
(Jorge Sosa is a staff writer for the Hutchinson Leader. He can be reached at sosa@hutchinsonleader.com)