Public broadcasters have H1N1 site for journalists
Public Radio Exchange’s FluPortal.org, funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and done in collaboration with NPR, aims to provide public media with resources for reporting on H1N1.
Led by a regularly updated and authoritative blog, the site also impresses with a selection of Web tools, including widgets and embeddable multimedia, for media outlets to use on their own sites, up-to-date reference materials and examples of what others have done. The portal’s handling of new media and both official and unofficial online sources alone makes it worth a visit, especially given its current update frequency and timeliness.
Tracking H1N1 shots, in Texas and beyond
Filed under: Health data, Hot Health Headline, Public health
Jeffrey Weiss of The Dallas Morning News reports that he was able, via an open records request, to get a full list of organizations in Texas that have requested H1N1 vaccines, as well as list of all shipments ordered. The list doesn’t include any public health departments, and is led by large hospitals and mass vaccinators.
On a national scale, the HHS-maintained flu.gov has an updated list of the number of doses of H1N1 vaccine that have been shipped to states, territories and regions thus far. And for your readers or viewers who are trying to get the shots, Google has a flu shot finder map for both H1N1 and seasonal flu vaccines.
6-foot rule separates San Diego paramedics, H1N1
Voice of San Diego’s Randy Dotinga explains exactly how the fear of H1N1 has transformed every step of the health care delivery process in the Southern California city, which has been hit particularly hard by the virus. Dotinga focuses on how paramedics’ routines have changed. “To protect themselves,” Dotinga writes, “paramedics are essentially using the same precautions they would against infectious tuberculosis – something they hardly ever see.”
Dotinga says the changes become evident as soon as the paramedics arrive on the scene. Before H1N1, they’d walk right up to the patient. Not anymore.
Now, paramedics across the county adhere to a “Six-Foot Rule” when they suspect a patient has a respiratory illness. “If you’re six feet away even without your protective equipment for a short period of time, you’re not likely to get infected,” said Haynes, the county official.
If a patient has possible flu symptoms, the paramedics put on N95 respirators. They began wearing the respirators instead of ordinary masks about a month ago. Paramedics will put on eye shields too. Many paramedics hate to wear them, and forget to put them on.
In this environment of extreme care, not even the ambulances are left to go on as usual. These days, in addition to their regular regimen of extreme sanitation, they visit a nearby fire station a few times a month. There, they are nailed with a super-powered germicidal fog that ensures no microbes, nefarious or otherwise, are going to linger for long.
Does the six-foot rule really work? What about masks?
Maybe. Your view of the effectiveness of social distancing likely depends on where you stand on a particularly contentious issue: airborne vs. droplets. If influenza is spread primarily through droplets (as the CDC says it does here, and here), then it’ll have a tough time spreading beyond three feet unless it’s smeared on a surface. In this case, then, the six-foot rule is an effective way to slow the spread of the virus, as are masks.
If, however, you believe the virus is airborne then it would be able to cross the six-foot gap and you would need, at the very least, an N95 respirator (a mask which filters out at least 95 percent of airborne particles) to protect yourself. In this case, though, it’s important to note that according to some recent research, an N95 won’t offer any more protection than a regular mask.
According to the Institute of Medicine, we haven’t yet heard the final word on influenza transmission and further research is required (PDF). In the meantime, most providers are erring on the side of caution. Check out AHCJ’s primer on controlling pandemic flu for further information.
(Hat tip to AHCJ board member Maryn McKenna for pointing us in the right direction.)
NPR answers H1N1 questions
With H1N1 and the mini-pandemic of rumors that seem to follow it on the rise, NPR brought out the big guns in an attempt to answer reader/listener questions and get the facts straight.
NPR’s health editors, Joe Neel and Anne Gudenkauf, teamed up with Dr. Andrew Pekosz and Dr. William Schaffner to tackle your questions.
Pekosz is an expert on viruses and immunology and a professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Schaffner is an infectious disease expert and professor at Vanderbilt University.
They answer questions like “Do H1N1 and other flu vaccines work?”; “Are they dangerous?”; “Who’s immune?”; “Should I be vaccinated for both H1N1 and typical seasonal flu?” and more.
Heisel: H1N1 reporters should get out the test tubes
Antidote’s William Heisel recommends that journalists looking to dive deeper in H1N1 issues pull out their test tubes, put on their lab coats and perform a few original acts of science.
In particular, Heisel focuses on possible tests of the link between H1N1 and swine. In that spirit, he adds a list of six recommendations for enterprising reporters to produce original news research on H1N1.
CBS questions CDC’s H1N1 prevalence estimates
CBS’s Sharyl Attkisson reviewed state and federal data (collected through FOIA and other open records requests) and found that H1N1 may not be as prevalent as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have estimated. The story turns on a July 24 memo announcing to states that the CDC would no longer count H1N1 cases and statistics from state tests taken before the memo that show that even tests of the most likely patients usually came back negative for H1N1.
The high level of misdiagnosis of “probable” or “presumed” H1N1 could result inaccurate reports of outbreaks as well as in people assuming they’ve survived H1N1 and are now immune when they’ve actually suffered something that may or may not even be influenza.
Related: The CDC talked a bit about reporting and data in its Oct. 20 news briefing. Read the rough transcript of that briefing, provided by the CDC. And, The Associated Press’ Mike Stobbe, an AHCJ board member, offers more explanation about the surveillance of H1N1.
Attkisson’s report:
AHCJ members talk H1N1, grade the media
AHCJ member Dr. Mona Khanna and AHCJ board member Maryn McKenna , along with New Hampshire state epidemiologist Dr. Jose Montero and host Laura Knoy discussed H1N1 and the media on New Hampshire Public Radio Wednesday. Debate centered on the media’s performance thus far, as well as the role that it ought to play during an outbreak or pandemic.
A few salient points from their key exchange:
Montero started things off by saying that health care journalists will be critical to public health efforts and will be relied upon to inform the public and provide context.
McKenna
McKenna gave the media a “C” grade for their performance to date, with the explanation that, after round upon round of layoffs, there may not be enough expert journalists left to fulfill the public health role envisioned by Montero. “All the people who would be counted on to know this subject … most of those people don’t work in the media anymore,” McKenna said. “You can’t count on the media any more as the people who can put the breaks on alarmism.”
Khanna agreed, saying that even experienced health journalists sometimes lack key scientific understanding and should consult with scientists or medical professionals.
IOM report details H1N1 resources
Like many organizations, the Institutes of Medicine had an eye on pandemic influenza (and related pandemic diseases) well before H1N1 started making some such fears a reality.
Now, the IOM has assembled relevant flu pandemic research from the past few years in one handy guide (PDF) that focuses on issues that would be particularly useful when preparing for a fast approaching pandemic, including public communication, physical and medical prevention measures, school closings and other ‘outbreak mitigation’ measures, and monitoring.
WHO declares H1N1 influenza pandemic
Margaret Chan, director-general of the World Health Organization announced today that the influenza pandemic alert has been raised from from phase 5 to phase 6, meaning that “the world is now at the start of the 2009 influenza pandemic.”
In a measured statement, Chan said the H1N1 virus “is spreading under a close and careful watch.” Chan goes over what is known about this virus and what is not known - how it will behave under conditions typically found in the developing world.
The statement warns that countries should be prepared to see more cases and, in countries where outbreaks appear to have peaked, officials should expect a second wave of infection.
A joint statement from HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Homeland Security Janet Napolitano says the WHO’s decision was expected and that it doesn’t change what public health officials are doing in the United States.
S.C.: Pandemic plan handled H1N1, needs tweaking
Joey Holleman at The State reviewed South Carolina’s reaction to H1N1 and what it revealed about the state’s pandemic preparedness. Holleman found that, on the whole, state officials and health professionals felt their pandemic preparations, put in place after scares such as SARS and H5N1, had worked well and proposed only minor adjustments to the overall plan.
AHCJ resources for covering flu, pandemics and preparednessHolleman said those specifics include detailing school closing plans, assigning responsibility for home-quarantined patients and adjusting hospital entry traffic to keep flu sufferers isolated. Apart from those details, the state’s plans appear to be working.
So far, the state has had 36 CDC-confirmed cases of H1N1 and no reported deaths. The cornerstones of S.C.’s response have been rapid stockpiling of necessary medications and materials and rapid education of both hospital staffs and the public. For the most part, officials said, the effort was not much different than previous efforts to contain other infectious diseases like chicken pox or whooping cough.
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