Gunnison County ready to tackle the Swine Flu scare

Local officials meeting daily

As the officials began to hear the first murmurs about the swine flu spreading across North America on Thursday, April 23, members of Gunnison county’s public health office and department of emergency management were sitting down to discuss a hypothetical situation similar to the one playing out in the real world.

It was a Pandemic Tabletop Exercise to discuss the county government’s response to a worldwide health risk. Now that the county’s Emergency Operations Plan is in place, such scenarios are not uncommon.
But Thursday’s meeting would be different than the others, although the group didn’t know it. On Friday, the plan was implemented and the incident command system took over to address an outbreak of swine flu.
At the time of publication, there had been no cases of swine flu in Colorado. The closest cases were reported in Kansas and Texas, where two and six cases have been reported respectively. There were a total of 91 confirmed cases in the United States.
“We are continuing to monitor flu-like illness rates and will be monitoring respiratory illness at hospitals to be on the look out for swine influenza,” said Colorado Chief Medical Officer Ned Calonge.
“I fully expect us to identify cases in the near future, given the presence of the virus in other states,” he added.  
Local officials are also monitoring the progress of the swine flu, which has been found in five states, as well as Canada, Spain, Great Britain and Mexico, where the disease is believed to have originated.
The local incident command group, led by county medical officer Dr. John Tarr, is meeting daily with representatives from the department of public health, Gunnison Valley Hospital, sheriff and police departments and other county officials.
“The Public Health people are really dialed into this stuff. We’ve been doing pandemic planning for the better part of three years and we’re using a lot of the stuff we’ve been working on, so it’s really paying off,” says Gunnison County director of emergency management Scott Morrill.
But so far there has been no information to come out of county’s Incident Command other than the press releases issued by the state and a reassurance that no cases of swine flu have been found locally, although the situation is continually being monitored.
 The Center for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Division of the Strategic National Stockpile (SNS) released one-quarter of its antiviral drugs, personal protective equipment, and respiratory protection devices to help states respond to the outbreak.
On Sunday, April 26, Gov. Bill Ritter said that in response to the rapidly changing swine flu outbreak, he had taken the precautionary measure of requesting Colorado’s allotment of antiviral medication from the SNS.
Morrill said if the department of public health has a problem getting vaccines or equipment, should either become necessary, his department would be able to support them by extending their reach into the state’s emergency management network.
At a press conference Monday, Anne Schuchat, MD, the CDC’s interim deputy director for science and public health program, said, “We are likely to find it in many other places. We don’t think containment [of the virus] is feasible.”
But Gunnison County has seen a pandemic onslaught before. In 1918 and 1919, when the world saw an outbreak of influenza and an estimated 675,000 Americans died, Gunnison County had two people fall ill and only one died.
The key to the town’s success, by most accounts, was its isolation and the will of the people to keep it that way.
One study by the University of Michigan Medical School found that a strict local health officer required train passengers to stay on board or submit to a two day quarantine. People arriving by car were met with barricades and lantern lit signs notifying them that they could not stop.
Local residents were allowed to leave the county, but would enter quarantine as soon as they returned and schools were closed for more than three months. The measures led to Gunnison being one of the communities least affected by the Influenza in the country.
Although there isn’t a plan for quarantine anytime soon, the county is taking steps to keep the swine flu out, like asking that people wash their hands frequently, cover your sneezes and coughs and avoid others with respiratory illnesses.
They are also asking people that have traveled to places of concern, like Mexico, to monitor themselves for symptoms for seven days. Also people with flu-like symptoms should stay home for seven days and anyone with a severe or worsening illness should contact their healthcare provider.
“It’s important to understand that at this time, in the United States, the swine flu is acting just like seasonal flu. It is a relatively mild disease; all cases have fully recovered and only one has required hospitalization,” said Calonge.
For more information on swine flu and the risk to you, call the department of Public Health at 641-0209 or the Colorado help line 1-877-462-2911.