Hospital taking care to shield patients, visitors from H1N1

BARSTOW • Cases of H1N1 influenza have been seen at Barstow Community Hospital, and hospital officials are taking extra precautions to protect its visitors and patients.

Because of the H1N1 virus, the hospital has issued restrictions on patient visitors. Since mid-October, visitors under 12 were restricted, according to hospital spokesman John Rader. Visitors with symptoms of respiratory illness or fever were also asked to stay away from the hospital.

Patients who test positive for H1N1 are treated with antiviral medication. Even though most don’t require hospitalization, the hospital is able to identify and care for patients with flu, often isolating them if they are contagious Rader wrote in an e-mail Friday.

“People with flu-like symptoms, who are not experiencing an immediate medical emergency are encouraged to contact their personal physician first to determine when and where they should be seen by a health care professional,” Rader said. “The best way to prevent the spread of seasonal or novel H1N1N flu is to get vaccinated as soon as possible.”

Even though the hospital provides the number of cases it has seen to the San Bernardino County Department of Public Health, because the information can change rapidly, it isn’t releasing those numbers to the media, Rader said.

Because the Department of Public Health doesn’t specify the hospitals lab specimens to be tested for the virus come from, it can’t give out the number of cases in Barstow either, according to Dr. Maxwell Ohikhuare, the county’s public health officer. The county only tests for H1N1 if a patient has been hospitalized or if there has been a fatality, but if people come down with the flu right now there is a 90 to 100 percent chance that they have H1N1, he said.

“Since we know, based on statistics, that over 90 percent of the flu going on right now is probably H1N1 there really is no reason to be testing everyone,” he said. “Otherwise we’d be testing thousands of people and we don’t have the capability to do that.”

The county board of supervisors is expected to renew the local emergency proclamation it declared in April at its meeting Tuesday. According to Ohikhuare, renewing the proclamation frees resources from the state to ensure the county is prepared to handle an expected increase in patients.

Cases of H1N1 have not shown up at Meridian Urgent Care’s Barstow clinic, according to Office Manager April Fernandez. A representative of Dr. Mike’s Walk-in Clinic was unavailable Friday.

Contact the writer:
(760) 256-4123 or jcejnar@desertdispatch.com