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Plan in place to handle large-scale flu outbreak

Medicine, vaccines could be distributed to entire Fayette population if necessary

By JOHN MUNFORD

jmunford@TheCitizenNews.com

Fayette officials have a plan in place just in case the flu vaccine shortage causes a mass outbreak as flu season gets further along.

Last week, several agencies met to establish a plan of action should a large amount of local residents need to be given medication, said Capt. Pete Nelms, emergency management coordinator for Fayette County.

Should a pandemic occur here, it would be difficult at best for patients to be treated at local doctors’ offices and Fayette Community Hospital, Nelms said. So officials from the hospital, public health department, emergency management and the county school system met last week to discuss how to respond to a pandemic “if necessary,” Nelms said.

“We have a plan to administer drugs or vaccinations to the entire community,” Nelms said, noting that there is no reason to believe the flu problem will become so widespread. “It’s a monumental task, and public health has been a tremendous player in that.”

Should the need arise, officials are prepared to open up a number of sites instead of just one to make distribution of medication easier, Nelms said. The sites would be spread out over the county, he noted.

The goal of last week’s meeting was to take a proactive approach to plan for a large-scale problem, Nelms noted. Although there’s no reason to believe the situation will get that bad, it doesn’t hurt to be prepared, he noted.

“We talked about our resources and what to do and how we would deal with it,” Nelms said.

For example, some of the county’s paramedics could be utilized to administer vaccinations or medication if necessary, Nelms noted.

The school system is a big key to evaluating the community for any potential outbreak, Nelms said. That’s because on any given weekday, the schools have about a third of the county’s population, he noted.

“They are a great indicator of what’s going on in the community,” Nelms said. “We can look at what it is, what the trends are and what needs to be done ... Obviously, if you have 50 or 100 students show up with flu-like symptoms you’ve got something going on.”

The school system also reports data to public health officials which can give a tip of any trends, Nelms said.

Nelms urged citizens to take precautions from catching the flu themselves, and those who do get the flu should take extra care to prevent from spreading it to others, he added.

“That’s in everybody’s best interest, if everybody would follow those simple rules,” Nelms said.

Over the rest of the season, Georgia will get 215,000 doses of influenza vaccine from the Centers for Disease Control and provider Aventis Pasteur. About 70 percent is expected to arrive before the end of the year with the rest coming near the peak of flu season in January.

The CDC determined how much of the remaining vaccine will be allocated to Georgia by comparing the amount the state already received to estimates of the number of residents in the priority groups for receiving the vaccine.

“Now, we can take a good look at our vaccine and population data and use it to make influenza vaccine available to individuals across the state,” said Dr. Kathleen E. Toomey, director of the Georgia Department of Human Resources Division of Public Health, which will determine how the vaccine is distributed in the state.

Persons 65 or older who haven’t had a pneumonia vaccine are recommended to do so for protection against one of the most deadly side effects of the flu, officials said.