Weekly Report: Download Influenza_Report_01OCT09 (PDF)
Yesterday at the Statewide Flu Summit, Governor Deval Patrick announced that the state has placed its first order for the H1N1 vaccine with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This initial small shipment, about 35,000 doses, will be used exclusively for health care workers -- who play such a vital role in the front lines of flu season. Additional H1N1 vaccine shipments will arrive weekly throughout the rest of flu season and we anticipate that in about six to eight weeks we will have enough vaccine for local public flu clinics to begin taking place.
The Summit attracted over 800 participants from a wide range of organizations including hospitals, community health centers, local public health and public safety agencies, primary and secondary educational institutions, representatives of industry and small business, and other state and local partners.
Governor Patrick, Health and Human Services Secretary Judyann Bigby, Public Safety Secretary Kevin Burke, and DPH Commissioner John Auerbach joined numerous DPH subject matter experts to share the latest information on H1N1 and seasonal flu, along with updated guidance and resources for flu vaccination planning. Participants also had the opportunity to attend breakout sessions which focused on specific topics such as clinical management, surge capacity and challenges in school and university settings. A significant amount of time on the agenda was devoted to questions and answers from the audience.
For your reference, an archived webcast of the entire conference -- including all breakout and question and answer sessions -- will be available online soon. We'll post a link to this archived webcast as soon as it's available.
In addition, all audience questions from the two plenary sessions that were not answered due to time constraints will be posted on our website in the coming weeks.
H1N1flu is already widespread in the southern part of the U.S. and it is likely to be widespread here in Massachusetts well before the mid-November date when the vaccine is here projected to become available. Therefore, we can expect that most people will have been exposed before being vaccinated. Since the flu virus mutates rapidly, it can become much more virulent (even deadly, like the 1918 flu) at any time, Once it does become more virulent, it will take some time to confirm that H1N1 is in fact the cause of the more grave illness/death. During that time the flu will continue to spread (because unlike SARS, people can transmit the flu before becoming symptomatic). When will the government tell citizens how to cope in such an eventuality? Has Massachusetts a plan for coping with an influx of people fleeing to Massachusetts from urban centers, such as NYC, if the flu becomes deadly? ------------- DPH RESPONDS: Thank you for your question. The H1N1 flu spread among millions of people in the Southern Hemisphere, without significant genetic change so far. While flu viruses are predictably unpredictable, there is nothing to say that H1N1 is more likely to become more virulent. In fact, flu viruses are just as likely to become less virulent, and therefore more likely to spread among people more active because of less symptoms. We must be ready for any eventuality, but wide scale migration is not very likely, as disease activity is already very widespread, and there really wouldn’t be any sanctuary, especially if people were moving and carrying the virus with them. While people are infectious prior to symptoms, they are much less infectious than with symptoms, and that is why the isolation approach works.
Posted by: Caroline Whitbeck | October 02, 2009 at 05:59 AM