Annual Flu Outbreak Jams County ER Services
Hospital emergency rooms are at record capacity. Patients in doctors’ offices are experiencing longer-than-usual waits. And up and down the halls and boardrooms of corporate Orange County, employees are coming to work sick if they’re coming in at all.
Southern California’s annual flu season has hit with a vengeance, and some health workers describe it as the worst in decades.
“I’ve been doing emergency medicine in Southern California for 20 years, and I’ve never seen anything like this,” said Dr. Stewart Brash, director of the emergency department at Western Medical Center-Santa Ana, which is treating as many as 100 patients a day--40% more than its average volume during the usual flu season.
Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian in Newport Beach set a record last weekend for the number of patients treated in its emergency room in a single day--about 220. “A good portion of those came in with flu-related symptoms,” said Debra Leegan, a spokeswoman for the hospital, which averages 130 emergency patients a day.
To free up beds for the overflow, Leegan said, physicians have been asked to postpone all nonessential surgeries. “Our emergency room is pretty tight,” she said.
Health officials are hard-pressed to say exactly why this year is so bad. Routinely from December through March, they say, about 20% of the Southern California population exhibits flu-like symptoms. The viral ailment--which is spread through coughing, sneezing or contact with the hands of an infected person--is enhanced by the holiday season, when millions of shoppers meet in public places such as malls.
Two sets of symptoms--each lasting seven to 10 days--seem to be infecting Southern California residents, according to Brash. The first involves coughing, congestion and mild fever, while the second is more serious, bringing on a high fever and nausea or vomiting. “If you’re incredibly unlucky, you may get both of them,” Brash said.
While flu shots may successfully stave off some strains of flu invading the area, he said, it is not unusual for a variety of strains to be present, some of which are unlikely tobe affected by the shots. Lots of people who get one of the strains are staying home from work, even as others are coming in sick.
“We got hit with a wave,” said Larry Thomas, a spokesman for the Irvine Co. of Newport Beach, which employs about 200 people. While the precise number of absent employees had not yet been tabulated, he said, it appeared to be significantly higher than usual.
Kathy Snyder, a spokeswoman for the First American Title Insurance Co., described the company’s Santa Ana office as more like a hospital ward. “All of our people are here sniffling,” she said, between sniffles of her own.
Doctors generally give the same advice to flu sufferers: stay home, get plenty of rest, drink lots of fluids and take over-the-counter medications such as acetaminophen or ibuprofen for fever and aches. If a patient coughs up colored phlegm or develops a high fever, night sweats or chills, a physician should be consulted.
In most cases, however, visits to emergency rooms or doctor’s offices serve only to increase the chances of the disease being spread.
“I’ve just seen six people in a row, none of whom really needed to be here except to get reassurance,” said Dr. Joseph Scherger, associate dean of clinical affairs at UCI’s College of Medicine. The university’s medical center, where he practices, is handling about four times its usual volume of patients.
“The problem is that the tolerance for being sick is less and less,” Scherger said. “If they’ve been sick for two days, they feel that they have to come in and get something to make them better right away. We try to reassure them over the phone, but some people just insist on being seen. You’re really better off riding it out and not exposing yourself to somebody’s waiting room.”
One sufferer doing just that is Al Rochon, 66, of Placentia, who earlier this week began experiencing watery eyes, a runny nose, a scratchy throat and fever.
“It’s an ache-all-over kind of feeling,” he said. “I feel listless and very uncomfortable. I just sit around watching television, but I can’t seem to get interested in it.”
His plan? “I’m going stay inside and mind my own business,” Rochon said.
