Planning for last year’s H1N1 and flu immunizations was beneficial to the Grey Bruce Health Unit according to local officials.
Health unit officials called the campaign the largest local response in recent memory.
“It was the largest ever response nationally for sure, and locally it was certainly the largest in scope in recent memory; next only to Walkerton’s water incident,” said Drew Ferguson, public/media relations coordinator for the health unit.
While the virus did not prove to be the deadly super bug it was at first thought to be, health unit officials said the campaign helped them update and restructure pandemic response measures, while still maintaining essential services, as well as test communication lines for ordering, distributing and administering vaccine, all within less than two months.
According to a recently released report, “in Grey Bruce, the annual seasonal influenza immunization rates average between 55,000 and 60,000 doses.” At over 107,000 last year, the combined total of influenza doses was almost double the average annual rate.
By Dec. 30, 2009, health unit nurses had immunized 11,238 people against H1N1 and 5,251 people against seasonal flu. In addition, over 46,000 doses of H1N1 vaccine and over 44,500 doses of seasonal influenza vaccine were packaged and distributed to destinations including physicians, hospitals, and long-term care facilities.
“There was a much larger response than just the H1N1 response. We also integrated communications with school boards and ramped up communications with physicians and health care workers,” Ferguson said.
Sue Shular, manager of infectious diseases and pandemic planning, also stressed the importance of communication in defending against a pandemic.
“One of the key things is communication, especially internally; keeping all the staff informed about what we are doing, and also keeping stakeholders informed. That was a key thing, to make sure our communication strategies were working. We had to make sure people were on phonelines, because if someone’s scared there has to be a way for them to get information to lessen that,” she said.
Shular called the health unit’s reaction to H1N1 “a daily response”.
“We met basically every working day and looked at the priorities for that day and following days,” she said,
Karen Sweiger, manager of vaccine preventable diseases, said they had planned for such an outbreak years ago.
“In Grey and Bruce we started the planning back in 2001 and at that time they were thinking it would be very virulent with people hospitalized and dying. The people who were sick were very ill, but in a lot of cases it wasn’t as bad as orignally expected,” she added.
“I think we were all very glad it wasn’t as virulent as it could have been in terms of morbidity and mortality,” Ferguson said, “It was a nice way to open our pandemic plan without such grave results.”
Emergency rooms weren’t overwhelmed, Shular said, but they were busier than usual.
“In 2007 we had 36 influenza cases all total. In 2008 we had 66. This year we had well over 200, and those were just the ones that were confirmed, so what we know is that in?Grey Bruce there was a lot of illness. Since it was really the only strain being reported around the province we can assume that they were basically all H1N1. It was siginifact, but we got lucky that the actual virus itself wasn’t as deadly as we’d heard it would be.?There certainly were a lot great lessons learned,” she said.
Based on the preparation that took place, health unit officials agree that if H1N1 had proven to be more serious they would have been in a position to deal with it effectively.
“That was one of the things that we were happy to see; that our planning unfolded as we had expected. The preparation was there and it unfolded as we had anticipated it would,” Ferguson said.
Vaccine is still available through physician offices, public health and some workplaces.