Preliminary tests on a Whidbey Island man flown by helicopter to Providence Everett Medical Center earlier this week indicate he probably does not have SARS.
Although tests conducted at the state Health Department lab are negative for the SARS virus, "these are preliminary test results," Dr. M. Ward Hinds, health officer for the Snohomish Health District, said Friday.
Since signs of the disease can still crop up within the next nine days, the patient will be retested then, he said.
However, the tests results, combined with all the other information on the patient, "lead us to believe it is extremely unlikely that this is SARS," Hinds said.
The case shows how health care workers remain on the alert for the severe pneumonia-like disease, even though it’s been about a year since the state’s initial SARS scare.
The caution began minutes after a Jack Prendergast, a Whidbey General Hospital paramedic, arrived at the patient’s home Wednesday evening. Prendergast heard that the man was having shortness of breath, a possible SARS symptom, and had recently traveled to China, where cases have again been diagnosed.
"It was pretty quick," Prendergast said of how long it took to consider this a possible SARS case. "I think due to the recent news coverage of SARS starting up again … that certainly helped."
Prendergast alerted the Coupeville hospital’s emergency room of the possible SARS connection.
Paramedics "did a tremendous job in the field of identifying this, asking the appropriate questions and notifying our hospital to take precautions," said Roger Meyers, the hospital’s emergency medical services manager.
Late Wednesday evening, the patient, who has not been identified, was airlifted to Providence Everett Medical Center. By Friday, he was showing improvement, but his condition still requires hospitalization, Hinds said.
Hinds declined to say what the man was being treated for, but said it was a noninfectious condition that appears to be responding to treatment.
Because of the possible SARS connection, the man was first treated in a special room in the Everett hospital’s emergency department that has a separate air filtration system. He was later hospitalized in a room with a similar isolated air filtration system, so when someone opens the door the air does not flow out.
"Providence was wise to ratchet this up to full respiratory isolation," state Health Department spokesman Donn Moyer said.
Meanwhile, word was passed to county, state and federal health officials about the possible SARS case.
"We worked on a SARS communication plan for making sure that local health departments knew what to look for," Moyer said. "What this shows is it doesn’t have to happen in the larger metropolitan areas for public health to work."
Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention officials recommended that the Whidbey hospital paramedics and emergency room workers who had contact with the patient be monitored for 10 days for fever, said Dr. Roger Case, health officer for the Island County Health Department.
Case said the patient likely contracted viral pneumonia while in China. With only nine SARS cases in all of China, "the chances of him being in contact with any of those people in a country as big as China is about zero," Case said.
Nevertheless, no one wanted to take chances.
"It’s a good precautionary exercise for us to go through," Case said.
"Things worked pretty well," Moyer said. "We’re hopeful that this is the way things will work out if there is a real SARS case."
Reporter Sharon Salyer: 425-339-3486 or salyer@heraldnet.com.
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