As the number of probable swine flu cases inched up locally today, the World Health Organization announced that a global outbreak is imminent. Four people in the county likely have swine flu and an impending influx of migrant workers is raising concerns in Gilroy, according to county health officials.
Tested flu strains from three middle-aged adults who lived in unknown locations within the Santa Clara County came back as probable cases Wednesday morning, and the Santa Clara County Public Health Laboratory is testing 70 more samples from private and public clinics throughout the county and expect results by Thursday at the earliest, spokesperson Joy Alexiou said. Meanwhile, a migrant camp in southeast Gilroy is set to receive about 250 people who have recently been working in Arizona and Texas along their borders with Mexico.
“It’s here. It’s in our community,” Alexiou said after a press conference Wednesday morning, where she reiterated prevention through common sense hygiene.
Margaret Chan, the WHO’s director-general, raised the organization’s alert level from phase four to phase five, signifying that a flu pandemic was imminent.
“At this stage, effective and essential measures include heightened surveillance, early detection and treatment of cases, and infection control in all health facilities,” according to the WHO Web site.
Fourteen cases of swine flu have been confirmed throughout California, mostly in the southern part of the state, according to the Centers for Disease Control in Prevention. More than 90 cases have been confirmed throughout the country, with 51 in New York and 16 in Texas – where a 23-month-old child from Mexico City died in Houston Wednesday morning after visiting relatives in Brownsville. The Mexican government’s tally of people with likely swine flu infections remained at 2,498 Wednesday, and officials there suspect the virus caused 159 deaths.
Federal health officials here believe the flu, which regularly affects pigs but rarely humans, originated in Mexico, and they are concerned because it is a new virus for which people have little or no immunity and no vaccine.
At the Gardener South County Health Center downtown near Martin and Monterey streets, about 20 people showed up Wednesday morning in addition to scheduled patients, some complaining of flu-like symptoms, others just scared and concerned.
“People are definitely panicking,” said Reymundo Espinoza, CEO of Gardner Health Network. “The biggest issue right now is protecting yourself.”
Neither the Gardner clinic nor the Gilroy Unified School District nor Saint Louise Regional Hospital have forwarded any suspected cases to the county health department, according to representatives from the organizations. The health department decides when the Gilroy Unified School District or any private schools will close – as happened with Branham High School in San Jose after department officials confirmed Tuesday that a 16-year-old female student there had contracted the flu while traveling in Southern California.
The county considers reports from school officials on the ground and the district’s only school nurse, Eileen Obata, who looks after the district’s 10,000 students and was actually in Hawaii on vacation until Wednesday. She said district Superintendent Debbie Flores filled the vacuum by writing letters home to parents. Any students with flu-like symptoms have been sent home with a recommendation to see a doctor immediately, Obata said. The exact number was unknown given the common flu’s ubiquity.
“We have kids with flus in the schools every day,” Obata said. “Normally we send them home, but now because of the swine flu we’re asking them to get check-ups.”
This Friday, about 100 migrant worker families – mostly coming from near the Texas or Arizona borders with Mexico – will move into the Arturo Ochoa Migrant Farmworker Center off Arizona Circle in southeast Gilroy. Of the 260 or so people expected to arrive, about 100 will be children who will enter the school system for the remainder of the study year, according to a camp employee.
Obata and Alexiou said there were no special precautions the school district or the county would be taking in expectation of the new students, but the county has been in contact with the Gilroy camp, which is one of 25 subsidized living quarters run by the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development Office of Migrant Services. It is the only such camp in Santa Clara County.
Gardner Family Health Network has a mobile clinic that remains on site at the camp as part of the health provider’s mobile fleet, which links up with stationary clinics between here and San Jose. The coordinated effort serves about 20,000 people throughout southern Santa Clara County. Gardner CEO Reymundo Espinoza said Wednesday he was aware of the camp’s impending opening, but Espinoza and the school district’s nurse said there was nothing to really do until someone reported symptoms, and then they would be treated like anyone else who requests it.
Alexiou agreed.
“We don’t particularly have to worry about somebody coming in because it’s already here, but what we really want to do is find people with high fever and symptoms and get them tested so we can start those measures that will help us limit the spread,” she said.
