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State Officials Preparing for Possible Swine Flu Outbreak
Perdue signs flu bill, among other measures
by By Walter C. Jones, Morris News Service
April 29, 2009
State officials say they are preparing
for a possible outbreak of swine flu even though no cases have been discovered in Georgia as of
Tuesday.
The state has purchased enough medicine for 460,000 people and requested enough for another
355,000 from the state's share of the national strategic stockpile. The federal government has put
aside enough in the stockpile for 1.3 million Georgians at no cost to the state.
The State Department of
Education sent local superintendents information about preventative hygiene. Georgia's hospitals
dusted off the pandemic flu plans each drafted three to five years ago and began informing their
staffs of when a set of symptoms should be suspect.
And Gov. Sonny Perdue signed into law House Bill 217 which allows druggists and nurses to
dispense flu medications.
What the state hasn't done is consider closing any schools or activating its emergency
command center.
"We are asking that the public maintain some level of calm," said Dr. Elizabeth Ford, acting
director of the Georgia Division of Public Health in a conference call with reporters Tuesday.
The state has tested four cases from metro Atlanta that made experts suspicious, and none
turned out to be positive.
The clues are fever, muscle aches, sometimes vomiting and nausea as well as either having
traveled in the last seven days to a site of the disease or contact with someone who has. Simple
sniffles aren't sufficient.
"We have already had a flood of people who have allergies going to the doctors and emergency
rooms," said registered nurse Denise Flook, coordinator of workforce and infection-prevention
initiative with the Georgia Hospital Association.
In a typical year, roughly 36,000 Americans die from the flu. So far none have died from
swine flu in this country, though 68 cases have been confirmed.
What is keeping state officials concerned is that this version of the flu is a mix of three
types -- swine, avian and human -- in a combination that no one has built internal defenses to
through past exposure, notes Dr. Patrick O'Neal, director of preparedness in the Georgia Division
of Public Health.
"When you have that much instability to a virus, you have to be alert that it could change
over time," he said, adding that a change could make it milder or stronger. "It's that uncertainty
related to human, pig and bird that makes us a bit nervous about it."
Mock virus outbreak drills on the state and local level have given officials some
confidence. Still, during the legislative session that ended earlier this month, Perdue requested
$7 million for the extra flu medicine and legislation to give him additional powers to declare a
state of emergency for health reasons.
Since 1990, the state has activated its emergency operations center for 22 presidential
disasters -- all weather related, and hosted the Olympics and G-8 Summit, according to Buzz Weiss,
spokesman for the Georgia Emergency Management Agency. But it has never engaged for a
health-related emergency, other than the cleanup of the Tri-State Crematory when hundreds of bodies
were not properly disposed of.
"In terms of planning and preparedness, we have done as much as we could expect for one of
these cases," he said.
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