If Snohomish County is hit by a global flu epidemic like that feared from bird flu, up to 200,000 people could become ill. Deaths could range from a few hundred up to 6,300 people, Snohomish Health District officials said Friday.
These warnings were part of an overview to local physicians, nurses and other health care workers, who met with public health officials to begin planning for the possibility of a deadly flu outbreak.
A pandemic is an epidemic that affects most – if not all – the world, said Dr. M. Ward Hinds, health officer at the countywide public health agency. At least 10 flu pandemics have occurred in the last 300 years.
“If a pandemic really occurs, everybody in this country will be dealing with it at the same time,” Hinds said.
“We’ll not be able to depend on help from the federal government or the state,” he said. “I think we’ll need to be largely self-sufficient.”
In Washington state, as many as 1 million people could become ill.
Nationally the number could reach 47 million, according to federal health officials. These warnings are based on the most severe forms of the flu, killing about 3 percent to 5 percent of those infected.
New cases would need to be quickly identified and reported, Hinds said, and patients put into isolation.
Unless a vaccine is developed to fight the specific strain of flu causing the epidemic, health care workers would be left with little more than basic public health steps to try to fight it.
These include limiting public gatherings, closing schools and advising people to stay home, be careful to cover coughs and frequently wash their hands.
These warnings echo those given by public health officials during the global Spanish flu outbreak of 1918, Hinds noted.
With predictions that up to 100,000 Snohomish County residents could require medical care, a flu pandemic could overwhelm the ability of health care workers to respond to it.
“The reality is the cavalry won’t be here,” said Gary Preston, an epidemiologist who works at Providence Everett Medical Center.
Increasing reports of bird flu among domestic fowl and flocks in Asia, Russia, Turkey and Romania have focused worldwide attention on the virus.
Of the 118 human cases of bird flu confirmed so far in Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia and Indonesia, about half have died.
Dr. Yuan-Po Tu, a physician who tracks influenza issues for The Everett Clinic, said the potential for serious illness with avian influenza depends on the strain that’s circulating, with some strains causing large numbers of bird deaths and others not.
So far, humans infected with the virus lived in close proximity to infected fowl, he said, and have contracted the disease directly from infected birds and not other humans.
Mutations in the virus that would allow it to easily spread among humans could make it either more or less lethal, he said.
No one can say that the strain of bird flu now circulating will cause the next global flu epidemic, Tu said. “The only certainty is eventually we’ll see another pandemic.”
Reporter Sharon Salyer: 425-339-3486 or salyer@heraldnet.com.
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
