Re: Toronto: Nursery Closed At Mount Sinai Hospital Over Concerns Related To H1N1 Virus
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Hospital shuts nursery wing after H1N1 exposure
Updated: Thu Jun. 25 2009 5:02:12 PM
ctvtoronto.ca
Toronto's Mount Sinai Hospital has closed its nursery wing after it was exposed to the H1N1 influenza virus, but no babies have been infected.
As a safety precaution, an infection control team is now closely monitoring all of the infants. A statement on Mount Sinai's website's said the Level 2 Nursery ward would likely be closed for seven days.
The exposure has been traced back to an individual who came into contact with the nursery, unaware he or she had been infected with H1N1.
The news came Thursday as another of the city's hospitals, St. Michael's, is on the cusp of declaring the end of an H1N1 outbreak in a respiratory ward, after two weeks.
Matthew Muller, associate medical director of infection prevention and control, said that the hospital realized that an outbreak had occurred when a patient tested positive for H1N1 flu virus, well after being admitted for treatment.
"Basically it was first recognized that there was a potential outbreak on June 12, where a patient at the hospital was identified as having H1N1 but they had been in the hospital for a while," Muller told ctvtoronto.ca in a phone interview on Thursday.
The hospital put the patient into isolation and conducted an investigation to determine if other people had been infected in the same unit.
"The results of all of that was that two other patients were identified," Muller said.
One of the infected patients was a hospital roommate of the person who was first identified as having H1N1.
The second person was not connected to either of the two roommates, though the patient was staying in the same ward.
The hospital then declared the ward as an outbreak unit, reported the infections to Toronto Public Health and put an action plan into place.
"That action plan has been effective and no further illness has occurred among patients or staff since that action plan was enacted that day," Muller said.
Under the action plan, the hospital closed the unit and barred new patients from entry.
Any patients who were well enough to leave the hospital were permitted to go home, but they could not be transferred to other healthcare facilities.
All of the staff and patients who were within the same unit, but not infected, were given preventative doses of antiviral medication, Muller said.
All of the patients that were infected by the H1N1 flu virus were adults, Muller said.
They suffered only "relatively mild" H1N1 symptoms.
"Nobody was severely ill, nobody had to go to an ICU, nobody was on a ventilator," he said.
Two of the patients have since been discharged from the hospital, and third will likely be able to leave in the "not-distant future," Muller said.
Muller said the hospital reacted to the outbreak in a similar manner that it would for any other outbreak.
"Some of it sounds dramatic, but in fact, this is almost exactly what we would have done if we had detected three cases of flu last winter, with the regular flu," he said.
Muller expects that the outbreak status will be lifted by both the hospital and Toronto Public Health on Friday.
"The plan was when the outbreak was initially declared was that if we go 14 days from the onset of the outbreak with no additional cases, then we would declare the outbreak over -- and that would be tomorrow," he said.
As of June 24, Ontario has confirmed 2,665 cases of H1N1 within the province, including seven deaths.
