Hospital board reviews procedures for dealing with flu-related symptoms

The Nevada Regional Medical Center board of directors were briefed on how the hospital's staff is to deal with patients with flu or flu-like symptoms during Tuesday's board meeting. Holly Bush said the hospital was receiving a lot of questions about swine flu and said the staff was updated daily on the situation. Bush said that staying home when you have symptoms is the best course of action and that if an office visit is necessary to let the staff know beforehand so precautions could be taken.

Dr. William Turner noted that no one needs to fear local herds of pigs.

"Maybe we need to let everyone know you can't get swine flu from the pigs here in Vernon County," Turner said.

Nationally, the illness has garnered much discussion during the past several days, and on Wednesday, the first probable case of this strain of flu in a Missouri resident -- an unnamed person in Platte County -- was discovered Wednesday afternoon during lab tests on specimens sent to the state health lab as part of the state's stepped-up efforts to defend against the new strain of flu, but confirmation from the Centers for Disease Control is a process that takes about two days. State officials cautioned that a single case of swine flu was a concern but not a cause for alarm. Governor Jay Nixon said the state has a plan to deal with flu outbreaks and local health agencies and state officials are following that plan.

The National Pork Board is now calling the influenza outbreak the H1N1 flu, aligning with the U.S. Department of Agriculture and other government agencies that begun referring to the virus by its viral strain.

U.S. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack said Tuesday that the virus should not be called "swine flu" because there is no indication that any swine from the United States has been infected.

"This really isn't swine flu." Vilsack said. "It's H1N1 virus. That's very, very important. And it is significant, because there are a lot of hardworking families whose livelihood depends on us conveying this message of safety.

"I want to reiterate that U.S. pork is safe," Vilsack said. "While we in the United States are continuing to monitor for new cases of H1N1 flu, the American food supply is safe."

"What we call this flu is important," said Chris Novak, chief executive officer of the National Pork Board. "Consumers and our international customers need to be assured that pork is safe and will continue to be safe to consume. Calling this swine flu has the potential to cause confusion. There simply is no reason for anyone to be concerned about the safety of eating pork."

The Missouri Department of Agriculture, the Missouri Farm Bureau and a host of other organizations agree.

Earlier, the World Organization for Animal Health, also known as the OIE, had recommended renaming the current influenza because it contains avian and human components and because no pig has been found to be ill. The OIE, which manages the fight against animal diseases globally, compared its preference for a geographic naming of this influenza to the Spanish influenza, a human flu pandemic with animal origin that killed more than 50 million people in 1918-1919. The current flu has not reached pandemic proportions according to the World Health Organization.

"The virus has not been isolated in animals to date. Therefore, it is not justified to name this disease swine influenza," the Paris-based organization said in a statement.

According to Peter Cowen, associate professor of epidemiology and public health at North Carolina State University, the H1N1 virus is being called "swine flu" because of the 1918 outbreak in Spain. That virus, Cowen said, became known as the swine influenza virus because it caused significant mortality in both swine and human populations.

Cowen, as did the OIE, notes that it appears that people who have come down with the current novel H1N1 virus have had no contact with swine.

The reason this virus is being called swine flu, Cowen said, "is the history and evolution of the virus. It also rests on the fact the some of the genetic analysis indicates that elements from viruses that have traditionally been found in swine populations are incorporated.

"However, since we know nothing of how this virus has gotten into the human population and there apparently is no history of swine exposure, it probably makes more sense epidemiologically to refer this simply as an H1N1 virus."