Mass innoculation site planned for ‘worst case scenario’ in pandemic

As the novel H1N1 “swine flu” virus continues to spread in Fayette County, government officials are at the ready should the scenario play out to significant proportions in coming weeks and months.

Capt. Pete Nelms, the county’s emergency management coordinator, briefed the Fayette County Commission on some of those plans last Wednesday.

A coalition of leaders from local police, fire and EMS departments have been meeting over several months with officials from the county’s public health department and the medical community to prepare a “worst case scenario” of what the county’s needs could be for any pandemic, Nelms said.

The county is training some of its paramedics to perform inoculations should the need arise to have a mass inoculation site. Fifty volunteers were recently trained to provide support at such a site, Nelms said.

And there have been five exercises conducted relating to a potential pandemic to make sure everyone is prepared to respond as necessary, Nelms said.

Though the H1N1 flu variant has not proven to be more deadly than the regular seasonal flu, it has shown to be more prevalent in younger people, with the largest affected age group being those from 5 to 24 years old, Nelms said.

That has been borne out in local schools, a few of which have seen student absentee rates increase to 10 percent. Some of the absences are not due to the flu but other illnesses including strep throat, school officials said.

“While it is serious and we are seeing increased sickness in the community, it is the flu and we will get through this,” Nelms said. “We just all have to plan to work together.”

Health officials have also said that pregnant women should be particularly cautious as H1N1 infections have shown a marked increase in complications for that target group when compared to “regular” seasonal flu.

The best course of action to try and prevent spread of the flu is to use frequent hand-washing and make sure that sick students and adults stay home until they have been without a fever for 24 hours without help from fever-reducing medicine, Nelms said.

Because of predictions for the virus to become widespread, some health agencies are predicting a worst-case scenario of a 40 percent employee absentee rate, Nelms said.

To counteract such a problem, Fayette officials have already looked at how it could operate with a shrunken staff to make sure the most critical county operations could be continued, Nelms said.