Pandemic panic

The impact of the H1N1 virus went global long before it became local.

The World Health Organization began speaking about a pandemic earlier in 2009, but few residents in Thunder Bay were affected by that initial news.

That changed just before this area’s flu season officially began. Health officials, locally and globally, began warning about a second wave of the virus in October. Those warnings led to one of the country’s biggest vaccination programs.

The local impact of H1N1, or swine flu as many called it, becomes tbnewswatch.com’s second top news story of 2009.

The Thunder Bay District Health Unit began offering flu shot clinics around the city in October. The clinics were immediately met with interest as residents waited, sometimes for hours, in massive lines for a shot.

Soon after the clinics began, officials with the Thunder Bay Regional Health Sciences Centre began reporting a surge in the number of patients walking through the Emergency Room doors.

"Honestly, they’re showing up because they’re almost surprised at how sick they are," said ER doctor Paul Dupuis in late October. "I think they feel a lot worse than they normally do with their garden variety flu, so that’s probably why they’re there."

The patients kept coming, and hospital officials were eventually forced to close the facility to visitors. Officials announced that it had taken the aggressive precautionary measure to help protect the health of the hospital’s patients and staff.

The number of H1N1 cases began to drop shortly after the hospital was closed to visitors.
The Health Unit held its final flu shot clinic that featured the H1N1 vaccine in December, and since then talk of the swine flu has died down considerably.



Coming Tuesday: tbnewswatch.com’s No.1 top news story of 2009.