Pandemic Prep… Please Stay Home!
While the H1N1 virus has not caused widespread deaths to this point, it is time to understand the importance of staying home when you are ill. Many may be afraid they will jeopardize their sick leave and other will feel they need the income, still others may feel they are no longer contagious when their fevers break. All of these are dangerous to the health and safety of those around us. Now is the time to discuss an absence with your employer if you do not know their policy. They should be encouraging you to stay home if you become ill for a minimum of seven days. Employers need to understand they may need to close their businesses completely if their employees return to work too soon and stread the illness to others.
Schools may also need to close if children return too soon. Yesterday 19 children in the United States died of the H1N1. This may not seem a lot for such a large country but if it were your child it would be devastating. Traditionally schools worry about money from the state and encourage children to return to school quickly and even to come as long as they don’t have a fever. That has all changed. District are now asking that you keep children home if they are ill in any way and asking that they not return until they have been medication AND fever free for at least 24 hours. I recently returned from Oregon where one small school district closed because there were so many kids and teachers out sick that they felt there was little to no learning happening in the classroom. Another school canceled homecoming and still another canceled a football game because so many were ill.
While this illness is not as deadly as we had feared it may still become so. It will definitely have a huge economic impact if we don’t take care to avoid spreading it. Store shelves could still become bare just because a trucker or warehouse worker went to work ill and spread the illness. The hospitals in Oregon have told ALL the employees not to report to work for at least seven days after becoming ill. This is serious as medical help could become very limited should the medical community become ill. Fire fighters live in close quarters when they are on duty. What would happen if your home were threatened by a fire and the firefighters were all ill because someone came to work still contagious? The point being, even if this strain is not very deadly it could greatly impact our lives if we are not responsible and do not stay home from EVERYTHING when we are ill. School, Church and work are important but we must be extra cautious and aware during this flu season. And…season flu season has not yet begun. What will happen then?
In the most recent study new information was revealed:
De Serres and Boivin tested 173 people enrolled in the study 8 days and 10 days after they first presented with symptoms. At Day 10, they were not detecting live virus in any of the 43 laboratory-confirmed cases of people with the virus.
The results of the study indicate that a large number of people with pandemic (H1N1) 2009 are still contagious after their fever breaks, and at least a proportion of people with the virus may be able to transmit it to others for a day or two longer than those who have seasonal influenza, De Serres says.
“For seasonal influenza in general, we consider that within seven days, the shedding of the virus should be over,” he says. “With this virus, we see that yes, the shedding of the virus is over for the majority of the people, but there are still people who are potentially contagious on day eight.”
In general, public health authorities advise people with seasonal influenza to wait for 24 hours after their fever has broken before returning to work or to school. Currently, that is the advice the US Centers for Disease Control offers on its website to people with pandemic (H1N1) 2009.
But that period of voluntary isolation is not likely to be effective in reducing transmission among at least a segment of those with the virus, says De Serres. “If on day eight, we still have 8-13% of people having live virus, to go back after two, three or four days (of presenting symptoms) is really too soon.”.
http://www.cmaj.ca/earlyreleases/24sept09_pandemic_h1n1.shtml
The lesson…stay home and if you even suspect you or a family member has the H1N1.
