Despite anecdotal evidence, extent of problem is difficult to quantify

Tooele High is dealing with a serious outbreak of flu-like symptoms, according to teachers, parents, coaches and Tooele County Health Department officials, though how many of those cases are of the H1N1 variety remains unknown. Almost half the school’s student body was absent last Friday, and THS’s football team was forced to cancel its game with East the same day because so many members of the team were sick.

On Friday, 659 students were absent from THS. On Monday, the number of students absent dropped to 444 — still roughly a third of the student body.

Still, district officials say flu is not necessarily to blame for the absences.

“Forty-eight percent of students missed one or more classes for whatever reason Friday. We don’t know if they went deer hunting, don’t know if they had the flu, or if they just skipped class,” said Ken Luke, assistant superintendent of the Tooele County School District. “You know, a lot of people are thinking it’s all H1N1, but there’s a lot of other sickness out there, so we don’t know.”

Luke said there is the potential for a school closing at some point, depending on how the rest of the flu season goes. He added a closure could be triggered based on a number of things, including how many students were absent, number of staff affected, and impact to the community.

“The concern is how many more times will this flare up, because we’re so early in the flu season this year that we just want to monitor real close,” he said, adding custodians in the schools are disinfecting rooms, hallways and offices. “We know people are sick and we’re telling people if they know they’re sick to stay home, whether it’s students or staff. We’re trying to keep things in perspective but realize it does have an affect on families.”

Melissa Swan’s 16-year-old daughter, Jenessa, has been out of school at THS since last Thursday. She has been sick with flu-like symptoms, although it hasn’t been confirmed to be H1N1. Half of the drill team, which Jenessa is on, is also sick, she said.

Swan thinks H1N1 is forcing the school district to sail in uncharted waters.

“I think this is unprecedented for the school district or any school district,” she said. “I don’t really see what they could do differently. I’ve heard a lot of moms say they should just shut the school down. I know they did that in Park City last year and the kids went to a movie and the mall. I don’t think that’ll protect the kids. It’s hard to keep the school running with that many absences, including the teachers, but the other half of the kids that are there are still important.”

Besides H1N1, Luke said there have been cases of the regular flu, strep throat, colds and even chicken pox.

“There’s a myriad of diseases hitting at one time,” he said.

Yesterday there were six teachers absent from THS for illness. In addition, two administrators, two counselors and a few other secretaries, para-educators, and cooks were out as well. Districtwide, 52 teachers were out Monday.

Grantsville High School Principal Travis McClusky said last week GHS had 25 kids out and that number was up to 40 Monday. He said there are 12 self-reported cases of H1N1 at the school.

Demand for the H1N1 vaccine was evident at a mass clinic held by the Tooele County Health Department on Saturday. A few people were lining up for the vaccine at midnight the night before, and by 6 a.m. there was already a sizable line. Bucky Whitehouse, public information officer for the health department, said about 2,000 people showed up to the clinic for about 600 doses of vaccine.

“We opened it just before 10 a.m., and by 10:30 we had more than half of the people that were in line being vaccinated,” said Myron Bateman, director of the health department. “By 11 we were pretty well finished.”

The health department will be holding another clinic on Wednesday. From 9 a.m. to 11 a.m., pregnant women and children from age 6 months to age 2 can get vaccinated with the shot. From 2 p.m. to 4 p.m., shots will be available to children from the ages of 2 to 18 with chronic health conditions that do not qualify for the mist, and Flu Mist will be available to children ages 2 to 18 who are healthy.

“We understand there are a lot of individuals sick and understand people feel the need for the vaccine,” said Sherrie Ahlstrom, nursing director at the health department. “We wish we could give it to everyone now but we are limited to what we can get and we’re trying to do our best to get it out as fast as we can. Nationally the vaccine is not being manufactured very quickly.”

Ahlstrom said yesterday health department workers conducted “cluster testing” through the state health department where they found a sampling of high school children that have symptoms that could be H1N1 and did swabs for H1N1 that went to the state lab for confirmatory tests.

“We will get those results hopefully tomorrow and then we can say for sure if that sampling had H1N1 and that should give us a better idea,” she said. “It’ll say, yes, we have H1N1 in our community or there are mixtures or it was all something else. This will help us be more definitive.”

Whitehouse added the department receives information from schools regarding students calling in sick.

“They call back and ask questions directed toward determining if they’re sick with influenza,” he said. “That’s a very proactive step the district is taking to determine how many of those are flu cases versus some other reason or some other type of disease in the environment right now.”

Ahlstrom added the health department has not seen an increase in hospitalized cases of H1N1, which is an important marker. She added the sentinel sites for influenza-like illness they track with seasonal influenza is not increasing.

“The actual markers we have are not showing that it’s really increasing yet, but we hear through the public that it is, and we understand their concern that there’s a lot of sick kids and individuals out there,” she said.

Whitehouse added, “We want to reassure the public that we’re in active surveillance right now and we’re monitoring things to be able to determine the extent of the problem in the community. Right now much of what we are hearing is different than what we’re seeing in active surveillance.”

Local physicians are also being inundated with sick patients. Family practitioner Dr. Sergio Abarca said starting last Wednesday his office has seen a huge spike in patients coming in with flu-like symptoms — headache, body aches, fevers and upper respiratory symptoms.

“We went from seeing probably about 70 patients a day to 120 patients a day just overnight,” he said. “It seemed like maybe one in 10 of those patients were testing positive for influenza A, which is right now considered to be synonymous with H1N1 because the majority of type A flu is H1N1,” Abarca said. “Another 10 percent were type B, and 80 percent were negative. It just seems the flu test isn’t completely accurate.”

Abarca said over the weekend he received about three times more phone calls from worried patients than he would on a typical weekend. His office ran out of the seasonal flu shot about two weeks ago and hasn’t yet been able to get more, although it is on order. He received about 20 doses of H1N1 vaccine from the health department last Wednesday, which were given to the health care providers who hadn’t had the immunization. The rest were given to patients and were gone before 10 a.m. that morning.

Whitehouse said the health department is encouraging the public to get the latest information about vaccine doses and other issues going on in the county by visiting the health department’s Web site at www.tooelehealth.org.

Sarah Miley: swest@tooeletranscript.com