Flu pressures Maine hospitals Emergency room staffs say patients lining up for treatment

With the outbreak of influenza widespread in all but seven U.S. states, hospital emergency personnel throughout Maine are under pressure to care for an expanding number of patients.

Hospital emergency rooms across the state are seeing an influx of people suffering from flulike symptoms, creating long waits for care. During the week of Christmas, the number of people seeking treatment for flulike illnesses accounted for an estimated 10 percent of all visits to health care providers, according to Dr. Dora Mills, director of the Maine Bureau of Health.

“Health care facilities have all been very busy,” Mills said Monday. “At this time of year, normally an estimated 1 percent of people are seeking treatment for influenzalike illnesses. The flu season has definitely started earlier this year.”

According to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, which is tracking the outbreak, flu now is widespread in Maine. The Maine Bureau of Health documented the first cases of flu in the state in late November.

Initial results from the Maine State Laboratory indicate that the state is experiencing the same flu virus plaguing the rest of the nation, called influenza A H3N2. Although this is the same virus strain that has caused severe complications among young children in the western United States, Maine has not experienced such problems, according to a state report.

The lack of complications, however, has not lessened the number of patients lining up for treatment.

“The volume of people seeking treatment for the flu or flu-related complications had doubled in the last two weeks,” Dr. Hassan Abouleish, emergency room director at Houlton Regional Hospital, reported Sunday. “We have about seven or eight documented cases of the flu, and we have seen at least 40 or more patients with flulike symptoms.”

Emergency room staff at The Aroostook Medical Center in Presque Isle also are seeing an increasing number of patients, though hospital patients don’t seem to be getting the illness.

“I think that the flu has hit faster and sooner than it did last year,” Tammy Beaulier-Fuller, TAMC’s infection control coordinator, said Sunday. “We have seen a 25 percent increase of people seeking treatment in the past two weeks. People just weren’t ready for it, and they have been forced to seek emergency care.”

To prevent the spread of flu, the hospital has taken proactive measures, according to Beaulier-Fuller.

“We placed masks and alcohol gel in the waiting area of the emergency room,” she said, “and we have posted signs throughout the hospital urging people to take a mask to wear over their nose and mouth while they are visiting loved ones.”

At Maine Coast Memorial Hospital in Ellsworth, “the ER lobby is filled with people in yellow masks so that they won’t get sick,” a public relations person who declined to be identified said Monday.

Staff at Eastern Maine Medial Center and St. Joseph Hospital in Bangor have seen an increasing number of patients through their emergency departments recently, according to hospital representatives.

“In the last couple of weeks, the number of people seeking treatment at the ER has increased; it’s been steady ever since Christmas,” said an EMMC spokeswoman.

In contrast to the number of people crowding emergency rooms, some regional nursing homes appear unaffected.

Representatives for nursing homes in Caribou and Houlton reported few cases of flu, a feat attributed to using routine precautions, such as wearing gloves and coughing or sneezing into a tissue or a shirt.

“Those precautions seem to be working for us,” Cynthia Jackins, Caribou Nursing Home Inc.’s nursing supervisor, reported. “We’ve had only one confirmed case of the flu at this time, so what we are doing must be working.”

Staying home when sick is the best way to prevent the spread of flu, according to the Maine Bureau of Health. Flu shots are another way to guard against getting sick. The state bureau has distributed approximately 80,000 doses of flu vaccine to health care providers for their high-risk patients. Even if one hasn’t yet had a flu shot, it is not too late, Mills said.

“People still have time to get flu shots,” she said, “and we encourage people to do so, especially if they are in a high-risk category.”

State health officials urge everyone over 64 years old, those 2 years old or older with a chronic underlying condition, women pregnant beyond the first trimester, and children 6 to 23 months old to get vaccinated.

Mills said she was confident that everyone could guard against the spread of flu, especially important now that children are returning to school after winter vacation.

“If we all work together, we can make sure that our children are not at greater risk for contracting the flu,” Mills said. “Although influenza is widespread, the virus is not at its peak yet.”