Juneau schools report first case of swine flu

The Juneau School District on Wednesday had its first confirmed case of swine flu at Floyd Dryden Middle School.

The parents went to a doctor for a diagnosis and plan to keep the student home until the symptoms subside, district spokeswoman Kristin Bartlett said.

"At this point, the family has followed all of the recommended procedures that the district set forth earlier in the year," she said. She would not provide details about the student, citing privacy issues.

Floyd Dryden Middle School will now implement the second phase of the district's swine flu response plan, which is a more heightened awareness and additional monitoring of students and faculty that are ill.

"The typical plan is the schools report in on a weekly basis," Bartlett said. "Now with Floyd Dryden they will be reporting in on a daily basis."

If cases of swine flu, also known as the H1N1 virus, increase in the district, then individual schools could shut down as part of the response plan, she said. The final level of the district plan calls for the closure of all schools and cancellation of school activities.

The federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention are working with drug manufacturers to get a swine flu vaccine to the public as quickly as possible, likely to be around the second week of October in Alaska, said Laurel Wood, immunization program manager for the state.

The CDC will be distributing the vaccine to each state based on its population, she said. The state hopes to get 35,000 doses in the first shipment, which will be distributed to individual communities based on population size, Wood said.

"We hope that we'll have as much as about 140,000 (doses) by the end of October," she said. "So once it starts coming it will begin coming fairly quickly and we we'll continue to get shipments each week until it is determined there isn't any need for it anymore."

Doctor's offices and clinics may charge an administration fee, but the vaccine itself will be free, she said.

"We will be continuing to ensure that it is distributed throughout the state," Wood said. "So people may not be able to get vaccinated on the very first day, but throughout the course of October and November and perhaps into December there should be ample vaccine available."

The federal government contracted for more than 200 million doses of the vaccine and that could increase depending on demand, Wood said.

"The symptoms from this flu are relatively mild," said Greg Wilkinson, spokesman for the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services. "Most people who get this flu recover in a couple of days to a week. We're really fortunate in that this turned out to be a very mild flu, based on the fact that we have no immunization for it."

The virus has been circulating in Alaska since the summer, and there have been three confirmed deaths from it in the state, including a 10-year-old Fairbanks boy that died over the weekend.

As of next week, the department will start a new count tracking only people hospitalized with confirmed swine flu and those that die from the virus, consistent with the CDC, Wilkinson said.

• Contact reporter Eric Morrison at 523-2269 or eric.morrison@juneauempire.com.