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U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro: “We are not here to create a panic.”
Over 1,000 Connecticut residents have been hospitalized and 23 of those patients have died so far this season — because of the common flu.
U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro and a handful of public health and infectious disease experts urged the public to remember that context, and to take basic precautions recommended every flu season, even as the world’s attention turns to the public health emergency that is the coronavirus.
DeLauro gave that update Friday afternoon at a press conference held in the first-floor special events area of Yale New Haven Hospital at 20 York St.
The 15-term New Haven U.S. congresswoman stood alongside Yale New Haven Health President Richard D’Aquila, YNHH Medical Director of Infection Prevention Richard Martinello, Yale professor of Immunobiology and Molecular, Cellular and Developmental Biology Akiko Iwasaki, and State Epidemiologist Matt Cartter.
The nominal cause for the press conference was the World Health Organiziation’s recent declaration of the coronavirus, a deadly virus that has killed over 200 people, as a “public health emergency” that presents a risk outside of its originating location in China.
Six American patients have tested positive for the coronavirus so far, including one man in Chicago who had not traveled to China recently but nevertheless contracted the virus from his wife. There have been no coronavirus patients identified in Connecticut so far, and no one nationwide has yet died from the illness.
DeLauro and the scientists beside her Friday stressed that context again and again over the course of the 45-minute press conference.
“We are not here to create a panic,” she said. “We are here to provide information.”
YNHH President D’Aquila: YNHH patient counts are at record hights.
A key part of that information is that many, many more people are at risk of contracting and becoming seriously ill due to the common seasonal flu, known as influenza. She said over 80,000 Americans died from influenza last year.
“We’ve been having a very tough flu season,” Martinello said.
D’Aquila said that higher than average flu patient numbers have contributed to record high numbers of people visiting Yale New Haven Hospital’s emergency department.
In the first three months of the hospital’s fiscal year, which began in October, the hospital had an “all-time record census” of 1,397 patients, he said. An average of roughly 1,400 patients were filling the hospital’s 1,500 patient beds between the York Street and St. Raphael campuses on a daily basis.
“That means on many days and particularly during the week in excess of 100 patients could be waiting in the Emergency Department for beds. What is happening is having a tremendous impact on our hospitals and our staff.”
YNHH Infection Prevention Director Martinello: Get a flu vaccine and wash your hands.
While only a small portion of that record congestion has been caused by people with the flu. D’Aquila said, the higher than average flu numbers have added to the hospital’s bed stress.
“The single most important thing to do is get vaccinated,” Martinello said about how best to inoculate oneself against the common flu. The flu season this year will likely extend to August, and so people should get their vaccines as soon as possible.
“Handwashing is of extraordinary importance” as well, he said, so as not to spread viruses between people and between one’s hands and one’s respiratory system.
Yale Prof Iwasaki: Working on universal flu vaccine.
Iwasaki said that she currently leads a lab that is working on developing a “universal flu vaccine” whereby a person would only have to receive a vaccination once or twice and then will be protected from the flu for life. She said she expects to have sample universal flu vaccines that should be ready to be tested on humans within the next three years.
While continuing that line of promoting protection against the common flu, Cartter also voiced serious concerns he has about the impact that the coronavirus has already had on Connecticut. An impact of stigma, that is, particularly against Chinese students, immigrants, and visitors.
State Epidemiologist Cartter: Don’t discriminate.
“The CDC is not recommending that people be excluded from school unless they are sick,” he said. He said he had received a number of calls from teachers and administrators around the state who were considering banning Chinese students from coming to school for a two-week period, even though those students have not come down with any illnesses.
He said the panic and paranoia especially around foreigners suspected of bearing illnesses reminds him of public responses to the 2003 SARS outbreak in China and the 2014 ebola outbreak in Western Africa.
“At this point, we still need to take a deep breath.”
If anyone in Connecticut is positively identified as having coronavirus, he said, there are federal and state guidelines around monitoring those patients and, if need be, quarantining them. But that is not the case now, he stressed.
Instead, Connecticut residents should focus their public health attention on taking basic precautions against contracting and spreading the common flu.
“We need to deal with the problem we have now,” he said.
Click on the Facebook Live video below to watch the full press conference.