Leicester Royal Infirmary has been forced to stop admitting patients to three wards in order to isolate the illness
Fourteen people being treated for cancer at Leicester Royal Infirmary have developed swine flu, forcing the hospital to stop admitting new patients to three wards and to prevent friends and relatives visiting.
Staff and experts from Public Health England are investigating how they were infected by the H1N1 virus, one of the flu strains this year’s flu vaccine protects against.
The alarm was first raised on Monday when six patients on one ward were identified as having caught the virus.
Glenfield hospital in the city is also treating three patients seriously ill with swine flu, who are receiving extracorporeal membrane oxygenation. They were brought to Leicester from other parts of the country.
Liz Collins, lead nurse for infection prevention at University Hospitals of Leicester trust, said: “We have seen an increase in the number of flu cases in February, in both the community and across our hospital sites.
“Fourteen patients on three haematology wards at the Leicester Royal Infirmary have developed symptoms that have been confirmed as flu. All necessary precautions were taken and these patients have been isolated to avoid an outbreak.
“We ask visitors who have cold and flu symptoms, such as a cough, runny nose or high temperature, to stay away from the hospital to avoid passing on their infections to our patients.”
The infected patients, who have been treated with antivirals, are in isolation in side rooms or isolated on bays, while staff continued to follow guidance on preventing the spread of infection, the trust said.
This included wearing masks, gowns and gloves and washing hands regularly. The trust said it was working hard to vaccinate as many frontline staff as possible and that the affected wards had received increased cleaning.
Philip Monk, consultant in communicable disease control for Public Health England in the east Midlands, said: “We are seeing a slight increase in the number of cases of flu being reported in the east Midlands, however flu has been circulating for a number of weeks now and as with every flu season we would expect to see the number of cases rise and fall.
“The H1N1 strain of influenza is now the main seasonal flu virus and so far this season the vaccine has been well matched to the types of flu strains circulating,” Monk said. “We do know from previous flu seasons that H1N1 particularly affects young children, pregnant women and adults with long-term health conditions.
“It’s not too late for children and people in ‘at risk’ groups to get the vaccine for free, and this remains important now that flu is circulating.”
Those who should be inoculated include people with underlying health conditions, such as asthma, diabetes, heart, lung, liver or renal diseases, those with weakened immune systems, older people and pregnant women.
Monk said: “Anyone in these groups who hasn’t yet had the vaccine should contact their GP, pharmacist or midwife, as they are at much greater risk of becoming seriously unwell if they catch flu.”
Provisional national data from Public Health England suggests that up to the end of January take-up of the flu vaccine in targeted groups in England was running at under 50% despite it being free for people in such groups.
The figures from GP surgeries show only 45% of under-65s at clinical risk because of long-term health conditions, 42% of pregnant women, 36% of two-year-olds, 38% of three-year-olds and 30% of four-year-olds had been vaccinated. The figure rises to seven in 10 for people 65 and over.
School-based programmes showed just over half year 1 pupils, 5-6-year-olds, had been vaccinated up to the end of December while less than half of year 2, 6-7-year-olds had been inoculated.
Dame Sally Davies, the chief medical officer, and Public Health England in October appealed for parents to get their children vaccinated via the new nasal spray . They made it clear this would help protect not only the children but parents, grandparents and siblings, as children were “super-spreaders” and much more likely to infect others.
Worryingly too, for NHS officials, is the fact that take-up for healthcare workers nationally shows fewer than half frontline healthcare workers (49.5%) were vaccinated at the end of January, down on the near 55% at the same time the previous year.
The low take-up might be a reflection of problems during the 2014-15 flu season when it turned out that the vaccine was less effective than usual against the main virus strain then circulating because of a change in the virus.
The Department of Health said: “This year, the flu vaccine appears to be a good match for the strains of flu in circulation at this stage.”
Source: The Guardian
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