Swine Flu Wisconsin

Wisconsin remained free of swine flu Monday, but the state health officer said he wouldn’t be surprised if cases hit here.

"It’s possible the outbreak could grow to affect many people in this state," said Dr. Seth Foldy of the state Department of Health Services.

A Mexico-based outbreak of the disease, which erupted last week, has expanded to five U.S states and other countries, with school closures in New York and other states.
Links
• Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
• Wisconsin Department of Health Services
• World Health Organzation
• Swine flu Q&A

To prevent the disease, Wisconsin residents should wash their hands frequently and stay home if they develop flu-like symptoms, Foldy said.

The state is receiving part of a national stockpile of medications that can treat swine flu, said Karen Timberlake, health department secretary. The shipment of antiviral drugs, combined with the state’s supply, could treat about 10 percent of the population if needed, Foldy said.

Swine flu has killed 20 people in Mexico, with 149 suspected deaths — suggesting, health officials say, that the disease could cause a pandemic like those that killed tens of millions worldwide on three occasions last century.

But most of the 40 confirmed cases in the United States — in California, Kansas, Ohio, New York and Texas — have been mild, said Dr. Richard Besser, acting director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The vaccine against regular flu is not effective against swine flu, Besser said. The CDC is working on developing a swine flu vaccine, he said.

Samples from 10 people in Wisconsin, most of them recent travelers to Mexico, have been tested since Saturday, Foldy said. About seven were negative for swine flu, and results for the rest weren’t available Monday, he said.

He said anyone with flu-like symptoms — body aches, coughing, sore throat, congestion, a fever of more than 100 degrees and in some cases vomiting or diarrhea — should contact their doctor for possible testing and treatment.

More swine flu cases likely will be reported nationwide in the coming days as awareness of the disease increases and it possibly spreads, Besser said. Cases have been confirmed in Canada, Scotland and Spain and are suspected in New Zealand and Israel.

Regular flu viruses strike each winter and also can be deadly. They kill about 36,000 Americans and hospitalize 200,000 annually, according to the CDC.

The swine flu virus, which contains genes from pigs, birds and humans, is something of a mystery.

Just 50 cases of swine flu were reported worldwide in people from 1958 to 2005, said Christopher Olsen, a flu researcher at UW-Madison, who published a study on those cases in 2007.

Another 12 cases have been reported since 2005, not including the current outbreak, according to the CDC.

Unlike the current outbreak, almost all of those cases involved direct contact with infected pigs, Olsen said.

Of the 50 cases he studied, seven people died — including a 32-year-old pregnant woman in Wisconsin who died in 1988 after having contact with pigs at a county fair in the southeast part of the state; her baby was delivered and survived.

Her husband and three health-care workers who treated her also were sickened, and 19 pig exhibitors at the fair were found to have been infected without becoming ill.

In 1976, a solider died and a dozen were sickened by swine flu at Fort Dix in New Jersey.

With the current outbreak, it’s too early to tell how much people previously infected with regular flu viruses may be immune to swine flu, said Yoshihiro Kawaoka, another flu researcher at UW-Madison.

"It’s very difficult to predict if the virus will take off or not because we don’t know how transmissible the virus is," Kawaoka said.

Still, the outbreak is "a major concern," he said. "It could have a major impact on the economy."