Tony Byrne receives his H1N1 vaccination from community health nurse Kayla Letto at the Pepsi Studio Thursday. — Star photo by Geraldine Brophy

While the numbers of people going to the flu assessment clinics has dropped markedly, Dr. Ken Jenkins is wary of declaring the worst of the H1N1 pandemic in western Newfoundland over.

Western Health’s vice-president of medical services, said the Corner Brook flu assessment centre in the former Regina High School saw 38 patients Wednesday. That’s a “nice decrease” from a peak of 195 a day on the Halloween weekend.

In Stephenville the peak hit Nov. 2 at 160 people with influenza-like illness through the doors of the flu assessment centre. Wednesday that number was 33.

With Wednesday being Remembrance Day and most doctors offices closed, he expected a small spike in the numbers of people using the assessments clinics. That didn’t happen.

“They didn’t show up,” Jenkins said. “Usually on statutory holidays and weekends we see a trickle-down from the physicians offices into our outpatients clinics.
“I was surprised. I though the numbers were going to go up Wednesday purely because of that effect.”

Meanwhile in the hospitals the numbers have been fairly steady.

As of Thursday morning there were 18 people in Western Health hospitals with influenza-like illness. Of those, five were in intensive care and three of those cases were on ventilators.

On Nov. 5 there were 19 in western hospitals, six were in intensive care and two were on ventilators.

Jenkins said there hasn’t been much change in those numbers, and there have been no deaths in the western region attributed to H1N1. In the province five have died from complications of swine flu, four from the central region and one from St. Anthony. There was a person who died after being transferred from Central Health to St. John’s.

“We’re beginning to see a downward trend, but it’s kind of early to say we’re out of it,” Jenkins said. “We’re cautiously optimistic about this, but we’re needing to stay on a high level of vigilance for the complicated sick patients that are going to be in hospitals and ICUs (Intensive Care Units). We think the outpatient portion is really starting to settle down now and we are looking on ramping back on our hours for our flu assessment centres because the demand is just not there any more.”

Meanwhile, Jenkins said there are still areas where health-care staff are ill and departments are left short.

As of 8 a.m. Thursday there were 52 staff in Western Health facilities absent. On Nov. 4 Jenkins told The Star there were between 40 and 50 staff off sick.

He’s expecting as people become immune there will be fewer staff absences.
Jenkins is also hoping Western Memorial Regional Hospital might begin easing its visitation restriction by this weekend.

“We are looking at increasing a certain degree of access to Western Memorial Regional Hospital,” he said. “There have been some people now who haven’t had much visitation in the last couple of weeks. We’re going to see if we can open that up and allow at least one visitor at a time.”