Local health care providers said they are screening patients carefully for swine flu virus amid reports of the disease's spread to more states and the World Health Organization's raising of its alert level to one notch below pandemic level.Some doctors' offices said they've been flooded with calls from worried patients and parents.
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No cases have been confirmed in Washtenaw County, but three suspected cases are being tested, according to the county health department.
In Livingston County, a suspected case announced earlier this week - for a 34-year-old woman - was confirmed Wednesday, health officials announced. The woman, who had traveled to a location in Texas near Mexico, where the outbreak started, is recovering at home.
Saint Joseph Mercy Health System on Wednesday confirmed it had treated a swine flu patient at St. Joseph Mercy Woodland Health Center in Brighton and released a statement to reassure the public that it is following state and federal health regulations.
"We continue to take every precaution to protect our patients, visitors and employees from exposure to this virus," the St. Joseph Mercy health system said in a statement released by spokeswoman Lauren Stokes. "At this time, there is no reason for concern among our patients, visitors or employees."
The University of Michigan Children's Emergency Services has tailored screening processes to try to isolate potential infections, said director Marie Lozon.
"We have a very robust response to this," said Lozon, who also is a children's emergency room doctor. In addition to typical screenings, emergency services patients now are asked whether they recently have traveled to infected areas in Mexico, California or Texas, or whether they have been exposed to someone possibly infected with the virus.
The patients also are screened for swine flu symptoms, which include high fever, aches and coughing. If patients exhibit symptoms and have the relevant travel or exposure history, they're considered at high risk for the disease, Lozon said.
At Child Health Associates in Ann Arbor, practice manager Jan Briggson said four patients were considered at high risk and are awaiting initial testing at local facilities. Should those tests return positive, Washtenaw County health officials will be alerted.
Swine flu cases are considered probable if confirmed by a state testing facility. A U.S. Centers for Disease Control lab test is required to officially confirm a case of swine flu.
Dr. Steven Yarows of Chelsea Internal Medicine, a federal surveillance site for flu monitoring, said his office has screened one female patient for swine flu.
Lozon said she doesn't know of any Children's Emergency Services patients considered at high risk. She said respiratory cultures from such patients would be tested in a U-M hospital's laboratory. The patients would be isolated to prevent possible transmission of any disease.
Elsewhere in Michigan, one person in Ottawa County is sick with a probable case of swine flu, health officials have said. They are awaiting CDC results.
Briggson said her office has been flooded with twice the normal volume of calls due to parents' worry about the virus.
"It's been very crazy this week," she said. "There have been a lot of questions on how to prevent swine flu. And, of course, anybody who has any slight symptoms, they're concerned and want to be checked."
Dave Serlin, director of U-M's Briarwood Family Medicine, said although many patients are concerned they've contracted swine flu, doctors haven't had reason to suspect the virus is spreading locally.
Some patients are asking for preventive antiviral drugs like Tamiflu, which is potent against swine flu up to 48 hours after infection, he said. However, in the absence of symptoms and relevant travel or exposure history, Serlin and others doctors said they haven't been giving anti-viral prescriptions.
Al Knaak, a pharmacy manager at Village Pharmacy in the Maple Village Shopping Center in Ann Arbor, said some customers have asked about buying antiviral drugs but have been turned away because they didn't have a prescription. He also said he has filled some Tamiflu prescriptions for high-risk patients.
Knaak said the store has sold a lot of surgical masks, perhaps because people want to have them in case swine flu becomes more prevalent locally.
"We've sold out of masks twice," he said. "Once over the weekend, and we got some more in and sold out again."
Domino's Pizza spokesman Tim McIntyre said the company has been sending updates and information to its stores, and it is shipping additional supplies of hand sanitizer to its stores for use by customers.
"We are sharing information from the Centers for Disease Control and are reiterating the message that the basics of good hygiene are crucial to preventing this and most other diseases," McIntyre said.
Although the swine flu virus should be viewed with caution, health care providers say it's important to place the current infection level in context with other diseases. In an average year for regular flu in the U.S, 36,000 people die every year from flu-related causes, according to the Centers for Disease Control.Yarows, the Chelsea doctor, said he does not think swine flu will reach pandemic proportions.
"With bird flu we went through the same thing, and with SARS we went through the same thing," he said. "I think you have a lot more risk from other things than you do from swine flu."
Cindy Heflin, Tracy Davis and Stefanie Murray contributed to this report. Reporter Amanda Hamon can be reached at 734-994-6852 or ahamon@annarbornews.com.