If you get the flu and after a couple days you start to feel better – but then you begin to feel worse again . . . go to the emergency room. That’s the sign it’s turning into pneumonia.
Dr. Leland Spencer of the Kent County Health Department says the experience with H1N1 flu so far this season shows it’s people who begin to feel better, and then worse, and then do nothing about that, who end up with the most serious and possibly fatal cases.
Spencer told the county commissioners today that so far Kent hasn’t been hit as hard as many other counties. Across Maryland, he said, the situation is “pretty intense.”
In a normal flu season 10 to 15 percent of the population is stricken. Estimates are that 30 percent will get H1N1.
There have been just eight cases in Kent to date. And, showing how this flu variety targets the young, six of these cases are under 16. All eight cases are doing well, Spencer reports, and currently no one has been hospitalized.
The Health Department’s greatest concern at the moment is the shortage of H1N1 vaccine. Spencer says 7,000 doses were expected to be here by Oct. 31.
The county has received only 600 so far.
That’s meant health officials have had to prioritize. First doses have gone to pregnant women. Children aged four months to six years should be getting vaccine from private doctors.
The Health Department is going to Rock Hall Elementary School today, to Millington Elementary on Nov. 2 and to Worton Elementary on Nov. 6. Then the focus will be on private schools.
As more vaccine becomes available over the next several weeks, Spencer says the focus for H1N1 vaccine will be on young adults up to age 24, then those aged 25 to 64 with chronic medical conditions, and finally the general population. Adults 65 and upward are the lowest risk of all, apparently because of exposure to the swine flu epidemic of the 1970s.
Meantime, there is vaccine for the seasonal flu. You can get shots for this at the Health Department every Friday morning, beginning this Friday.
Spencer says it takes seven to 10 days for the vaccine to take full effect after getting a shot.
When to go to the emergency room? Spencer’s criteria: If fever above 100.6 persists for several days. If your child has the flu and seems unusually slow to respond. If nausea and vomiting goes on beyond 24 hours. That’s when “you want to be concerned.”
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