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Written by Dave Mabell Lethbridge Herald
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Tuesday, November 03 2009, 8:53 PM |
An assessment centre for southern Albertans who suspect they’ve caught the H1N1 flu will open today in Lethbridge.
But flu shots won’t resume until Thursday, health officials say. And immunization will be restricted to what Alberta authorities consider one of the highest-risk populations: children from six months up to five years.
In Lethbridge, the assessment centre will open today in Heritage Hall, near the vaccination clinic reopening Thursday in Exhibition Park. It’s scheduled to remain open daily, from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. and patients will be asked to use the building’s front door and the parking lot on the south side of the exhibition buildings.
The vaccination clinic will reopen from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. on Thursday in the West Pavilion, with parking north of the buildings. Additional clinics will open Thursday at 9 a.m. in Milk River, moving to Raymond for a 1 p.m. start; officials said locations were being confirmed.
On Friday, Dr. Gerry Predy announced, clinics across Alberta will begin offering non-adjuvanted vaccine to pregnant women. Pre-school youngsters will continue to be immunized — and the provincial health officials warn parents will have to produce age ID for each child.
Children must be more than six months but less than five years old as of Nov. 1, says Predy, senior medical officer of health for Alberta Health Services. All other people will be turned away, he warned Tuesday.
The province’s new goal, he said, is to keep waiting times to an hour or less.
Adults living with chronic medical conditions will have to wait until next week, officials added in Edmonton. And there will be a still longer wait for young adults — a group that’s already hard-hit by the pandemic flu across Canada. In Lethbridge, the family of a 26-year-old woman who died in hospital here on the weekend reported she’d been battling “Influenza A,” a descriptor that includes H1N1.
Citing Alberta government policy, local health officials could not confirm her as the province’s latest H1N1 victim. As of Nov. 2, however, Alberta Health confirmed 287 hospitalized patients — 32 of them in southern Alberta — including 14 fatalities since the virus reached Alberta.
Dr. Vivien Suttorp, southern Alberta’s medical officer of health, said people of any age who feel they’re coming down with the flu will be examined at the new assessment centre. Open daily until further notice, it will offer diagnosis and limited treatment services.
“It is very important for the public to understand that H1N1 vaccine will not be available” at the assessment centre, local officials stressed. Laboratory tests to confirm H1N1 will not be taken, Suttorp added, and no “sick notes” will be provided.
What will be offered, she said, is a range of assessment and treatment services including time with a physician, medications and detailed self-treatment instructions. When warranted, a patient could be admitted directly to the hospital.
“If a person has chest pain or significant shortness of breath, they should go directly to emergency,” she added.
The new facility is designed to take pressure off the city’s medical clinics and emergency room, already hard hit by the first wave of H1N1 flu. Suttorp said anyone who feels they’re not recovering normally from the flu — or who begins feeling worse — can be quickly assessed and treated.
Pregnant women who haven’t been vaccinated and feel they’ve been hit by the flu should come in immediately, she added.
Additional assessment centres could be opened in southern Alberta communities where the number of ill people exceeds local medical facilities’ ability to cope, Suttorp said.
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