Illnesses and possible flu outbreaks in near Western Kentucky closes schools for the weekHealthy Care

Several counties in Western Kentucky have closed schools for the remainder of the week due to multiple illnesses "in response to what public health officials are calling a possible flu outbreak among young people," Austin Ramsey and Bobbie Hayse report for the Messenger-Inquirer in Owensboro. Butler, Ohio and Todd County schools announced their closings Tuesday, just after two- and three-day closures in Muhlenberg and Hancock County, respectively.

Jessica Austin, an epidemiologist with the Green River District Health Department, told Ramsey and Hayes that "tests in Ohio County seem to be pointing to seasonal influenza, a contagious respiratory illness caused by a group of related viruses that can be of real concern to high-risk populations such as the elderly or young."

February is typically the height of most flu cases, Ramsey and Hayse write. "Persons can protect themselves somewhat with an annual vaccine that the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports indicate is a good match for common strains seen in patients this year. Austin said it remains unclear whether patients treated for influenza in the region received vaccines within the last six months."

Austin says that almost all local health providers confirm influenza using 'rapid flu tests'-- mouth or nasal swabs that can yield results within 15 minutes -- but "CDC officials warn that the quick tests often produce false-positive results and that their sensitivity hovers somewhere between 50-70 percent," Ramsey and Hayse write.

It's too early to raise any public health crisis alarms, so Austin "is now calling on all local hospitals and clinics in the seven-county region to send test samples to the Kentucky Department for Public Health for more accurate results."

"That's the only way we're going to tell if this really is influenza, what kind it is and how widespread the problem really is," she said.

"But officials with One Health Infectious Disease, which is monitoring flu cases at Owensboro Health facilities in all of western Kentucky and southern Indiana, said there were 113 confirmed cases of flu in the region in January and already 69 in the first seven days of February, representing what one official called a 'significant jump' in a short period of time," Ramsey and Hayse write.

from Kentucky Health News http://ift.tt/2kntTJM Illnesses and possible flu outbreaks in near Western Kentucky closes schools for the weekHealthy Care

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