How to Prevent Getting H1N1 Flu or Swine Flu

The four key things to do that will help in preventing you from getting the H1N1 Flu or Swine Flu:

1. Wash Your Hands
2. Cover Your Cough
3. Don't Touch Your Face
4. Stay Away from People Who are Sick

If you do get sick, stay home so you won't pass it on to anyone else.

Source: CDC H1N1 Flu.

These recommendations for keeping students healthy during H1N1 outbreak come from my friend, Dr. Jennifer Shu of CNN.com:

1. Follow healthy basic hygiene practices.
Encourage students to wash their hands or use a hand sanitizer frequently and to avoid touching the eyes, nose and mouth, where germs can easily enter the body.

2. Keep surfaces clean.
Use a disinfectant to clean commonly shared surfaces at least daily and when visibly soiled.

3. Keep sick students at a distance.
Try spacing desks as far apart as possible to avoid close contact between students. It may also be helpful, especially for individuals at high risk for complications from the flu, to stay at least 6 feet away from sick people.

4. Go home.
Sick students and teachers should go home or stay home if they are too ill to participate in classroom activities. In addition, they should not return until any fever has been gone for at least 24 hours.

5. Follow the latest health recommendations.
H1N1 guidelines may be a moving target since it is still not well known how the virus will affect individuals and communities.

6. Play down perfect attendance.
Some kids (and parents) try so hard for an end-of-the-year perfect attendance award that it can be tempting to go to school even for a few hours to avoid being counted as "absent."

7. Promote home-based learning.
If children feel well enough to study while they're recovering, send some schoolwork home or use an online learning program so they can keep up with lessons.

When vaccine is first available, the CDC recommends that the following groups be vaccinated:

* Pregnant women
* People who live with or care for children < 6 months
* Health care and emergency services personnel
* Persons between the ages of 6 months - 24 years of age
* People from ages 25 - 64 years who are at higher risk for novel H1N1 because of chronic health disorders or compromised immune systems.

Source: CDC. July 29, 2009. CDC Advisors Make Recommendations for Use of Vaccine Against Novel H1N1.

I know that in every state, it's really easy to focus on the numbers, but I think right now, the numbers don't tell us as much as the trends.

Our assessment is that transmission here in the US is ongoing, that this is a very transmissible virus, similar to the seasonal influenza viruses.

Fortunately, the severity of illness that we are seeing at this point doesn't look as terrible as a category five kind of pandemic or the severity of impact that some had feared.

Dr Anne Schuchat
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

While right now the appropriate stance is "alert" rather than "alarm," let's examine the role of practicing physicians, and our AMA, in this circumstance of a new influenza virus that seems more virulent in young adults and against which we don't have immunity.

Each of us needs to be vigilant when seeing patients with acute respiratory symptoms. Although the clinical illness caused by this swine flu virus has been mild in the U.S., it has not been mild in Mexico, as you know from news reports. In case you are confronted with a patient with possible influenza (recognizing that the "usual" seasonal influenza season is over), here are some important considerations.

Take a travel history from anyone with significant acute respiratory illness. Take appropriate precautions yourself, wearing an N95 respirator or a surgical mask/gown/gloves. Do a nasopharyngeal swab, put it in viral transport media and send to the appropriate clinical lab at your hospital. Dispose of gown, gloves and goggles in a biohazard bag. Pay strict attention to hand washing with soap/water or hand sanitizer.

Note that public health budgets are stretched, so don't do swabs for viral isolation on folks who seem to have the common cold!

• Swine Flu Virus Infections in Pigs
• Qs & As about Swine Flu
• What You Can Do
• Flu Can Spread from Pigs to People and from People to Pigs

Stay home from work or school.
Limit contact with others to keep from infecting them.
Watch for concerning symptoms.

1. Take care of yourself (or child).
2. Monitor yourself (or child) for worsening of symptoms.

* Fast breathing or trouble breathing
* Bluish skin color
* Not drinking enough fluids
* Not waking up or not interacting
* Being so irritable that the child does not want to be held
* Flu-like symptoms improve but then return with fever and worse cough
* Fever with a rash

* Difficulty breathing or shortness of breath
* Pain or pressure in the chest or abdomen
* Sudden dizziness
* Confusion
* Severe or persistent vomiting

* Oseltamivir (brand name Tamiflu ®) is approved to both treat and prevent influenza A and B virus infection in people one year of age and older.
* Zanamivir (brand name Relenza ®) is approved to treat influenza A and B virus infection in people 7 years and older and to prevent influenza A and B virus infection in people 5 years and older.

• A person who has the virus needs to sneeze or cough onto the bill or blow their nose so mucus stays on the currency
• A second person needs to touch the money while the virus is still viable (alive)
• The second person then needs to person put his or her contaminated hand in their mouth or pick their nose, getting the virus into their mucous membranes

The 4 things you can do that will help in preventing from getting the Swine Flu:

1. Wash Your Hands
2. Cover Your Cough
3. Don't Touch Your Face
4. Stay Away from People Who are Sick

If you get sick, stay home, so you won't pass it on to anyone else.

Scammers read newspapers, watch TV and surf the Internet and they know that by using a hook from the day's top headlines, that they'll be able to catch lots of fish.

Right now, issues associated with swine flu and a potential pandemic are of global interest and that means scammers have a very large pond to go phishing in.

Steve Cox
BBB Spokesperson

• Avoid opening e-mail from an unknown source and do not click on any links in the body of the e-mail or open any attachments. Instead, delete the e-mail or report it to the Federal Trade Commission by forwarding the e-mail to spam@uce.gov.


• Don't believe online offers for vaccinations against swine flu because a vaccine does not exist. For more information on swine flu and updates on progress in fighting the outbreak, go to www.cdc.gov/swineflu


• Make sure your anti-virus and anti-spyware software is up to date and all operating system security patches have been installed. If your computer becomes infected as the result of a spam e-mail about swine flu, you can report it to the Internet Crime Complaint Center at www.ic3.gov.

I think the world is infinitely better prepared
than it was 90 years ago.

Gregory Hartl
WHO spokesman
Referring to the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic