'Worried well' jam NJ emergency rooms; none tested positive
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By Bob Groves
The Herald News
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NORTH JERSEY, N.J. — While state health officials await federal confirmation of five probable cases of swine flu, emergency rooms across North Jersey are seeing an influx of worried residents.
But despite the surge in patients complaining of coughs, aches and fevers, no area hospitals had reported any positive tests for the illness by Tuesday.
Swine flu has sickened 68 people in the United States — including at least 28 at one New York City school. Several hundred more students at the school have also fallen ill, New York health officials said.
Eighty-two of 380 students at P.S. 177 in the Flushing section of Queens, a school for autistic children, have called in sick, Mayor Michael Bloom-berg said. A third school in Manhattan is being evaluated because students there are sick, New York City Health Commissioner Thomas Frieden said.
The United States has not reported any deaths from swine flu, but "I fully expect we will see deaths from this infection," as more cases are investigated, said Richard Besser, acting director of the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Swine flu was first reported last week in Mexico, where it has killed 152 people and sickened nearly 2,000.
The CDC is expected to confirm today whether five New Jerseyans identified on Monday as probably having swine flu actually have the illness.
The five people are from various counties in New Jersey, and all are recuperating at home from mild flu, said Health Commissioner Heather Howard. Four of them had traveled recently to Mexico, she said.
But reports of the global outbreak of swine flu have made many New Jerseyans nervous enough to go to the hospital to be tested. The emergency department at St. Joseph's Regional Medical Center in Paterson has been overwhelmed, said Dr. Mark Rosenberg.
Of the 360 people who came to St. Joseph's on Tuesday, "about half of them we were concerned they could have flu-related illness," said Rosenberg, chairman of emergency medicine at the hospital. Each of those patients — and their family members — were given a mask to wear at the hospital as a precaution, he said. Normally his department sees about 325 people per day, he said.
Since Monday, the hospital has sent about a dozen positive test results for Type A flu to the state health laboratory for further testing for possible swine flu, he said. Unless they had other serious illness, these flu patients were treated with the antiviral drug Tamiflu and sent home, he said.
Positive Type A flu test results are sent to the state Health Department to be tested for swine flu. New Jersey sends probable swine flu cases to the CDC for confirmation. The current swine flu is a combination of bird, pig and human genetic material.
Many of the people crowding the hospital this week are "the worried well, as well as many who have true influenza or summertime colds, or allergies," Rosenberg said.
He said that after people hear news reports Tuesday about the increased number of swine flu cases in the U.S., "tomorrow will be even crazier with more worried well, and doctors' offices being overwhelmed," he said.
Two people with symptoms also tested negative for flu at St. Mary's Hospital in Passaic. Many of the "worried well," as these patients are called, have also come to The Valley Hospital in Ridgewood, said Maureen Curran Kleinman, a spokeswoman.
No probable cases showed up either at Hackensack University Medical Center, which has tested 19 people since the weekend, or at Holy Name Hospital in Teaneck, which tested three people who thought they had symptoms.
"We had a big spike in visits to the emergency room [on Monday]," said Maria Margiotta, a spokeswoman for Englewood Hospital and Medical Center. Englewood tested 19 people on Monday, and nine on Tuesday, but none of them tested positive for Type A or Type B flu, Margiotta said.
"A lot of people are going to ERs claiming to have flu symptoms," she said.
This article includes material from The Associated Press.
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