The Swine Flu Wars: H1N1 Comes to Alabama
Swine flu arrived in Macon County, Alabama, last week, showing up in classrooms at all levels and leaving a spate of empty desks in its wake. But authorities are battling the virus on its own turf, using vacant seats as both a map and compass to stem the tide.
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When the virus entered the United States last April, the Centers for Disease Control issued test kits to physicians around the country to record confirmed cases. But by late July, doctors stopped individual reporting, saying the flu strain had become so extensive that maintaining such detailed surveillance was time-consuming and likely underestimating the true number of flu cases in the U.S. The Alabama Department of Public Health came up with a new plan: tracking the virus through school absentee records, voluntarily shared by individual districts. (Check out a story on the rapid spread of the H1N1 virus.)
"We'd never had a need for that information before," says Dr. Jim McVay, director of health promotion and chronic disease for ADPH. He says typically this time of year, you'd expect 1% to 2% absenteeism, with that number escalating to 5% and 6% during the traditional flu months of January and February. Instead, student absentee rates in places like Tuskegee-based Macon County climbed to 16% last week, prompting the county school district to close six schools. "To say it's just the flu," says McVay, "tell that to someone whose infant has died of influenza. Yes, it's just another case of the flu, but we can slow the spread. Keep the sick children home so the well children can keep going to school."
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