Death comes amid swine flu spurt
Three others here still hospitalized
Published: June 22, 2009, 12:30 am
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The death Saturday of an eighth-grade teenager from swine flu came as public health officials tracked a small burst of hospitalizations last week in Buffalo caused by the influenza virus.
The boy who died has been identified as Matthew Davis, 15, a student at Buffalo’s Harvey Austin School 97. Attempts by The Buffalo News to reach his family were unsuccessful.
The death is the first in Erie County attributed to the H1N1 flu virus.
Three children remain hospitalized at Women & Children’s Hospital with the flu, including a 9-year-old student at Charles Drew Science Magnet School 59 in critical condition. One of the children is from Niagara County.
All four hospitalizations arose in the last week, Dr. Richard Judelsohn, a private pediatrician and medical director of the county Health Department, said Sunday.
In total, eight people, including two adults, have been hospitalized in Erie County since the first case of H1N1 was confirmed here May 11, public health officials confirmed.
Most of the H1N1 cases seen in the Buffalo Niagara region have been mild, as is the case in the United States in general.
However, Judelsohn said, “The hospitalizations and death are reminders that all of us must redouble our efforts to use practicable means to prevent the spread of the virus.”
Among other measures, health officials recommend that individuals stay home when ill and practice good cough etiquette and hand hygiene in public.
Swine flu, officially known as novel H1N1, is a influenza virus of swine origin that was first detected in humans in April. The strain is continuing to spread in many parts of the U. S., especially in the Northeast, according to a telephone briefing last week by officials at the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The increased flu activity in the Northeastern U. S. is a rough estimate based on reports from sentinel health clinics that track what percent of their patients suffer from influenzalike symptoms.
The regular flu season usually winds down in June, but it’s expected that H1N1 flu activity will continue through the summer and into the fall, when the regular flu season starts again, according to the CDC.
As of Friday, there were 21,449 confirmed and probable cases of H1N1 flu in the U. S., including 166 in Erie County. However, these cases only reflect the illness’ spread. The actual number of people with the virus is significantly higher, probably in the hundreds of thousands, officials said at the briefing.
So far, public health officials have reported about 1,600 hospitalizations and 87 deaths nationwide from H1N1. The regular flu causes 36,000 deaths a year in the U. S.
The virus continues to hit mostly younger people, usually causing fever, cough, shortness of breath, fatigue and chills, symptoms similar to the regular flu. About 70 percent of the hospitalized patients have suffered from an existing underlying medical condition, such as asthma or diabetes, making them more at risk for complications, according to the CDC.
Information about whether Matthew Davis was healthy before coming down with the flu has not been publicly released.
Doctors do not know why the new strain of influenza seems to favor younger patients over the elderly, who typically are more at risk for complications from the regular flu. One theory is that older people may have been exposed to viruses similar to the new virus, giving their body’s disease-fighting immune system an advantage.
It is one of the unanswered questions about how H1N1 develops, what makes one person more at risk than another, and whether there are better ways of treating the disease.
Experts are worried about the new virus because no one knows if it is more or less dangerous than regular flu or if it will mutate later into a more lethal virus in a world population with little or no immunity to it.
“We need to know more,” said Judelsohn. “There have to be lessons learned day to day in case this virus becomes more virulent.”
hdavis@buffnews.com
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