Danbury Hospital Joining Others

Restricting Visitors To Stop Swine Flu

DANBURY — Visiting a loved one in the hospital? Better check on new flu limits first.

Hospitals around the country, including neighboring Danbury Hospital, are turning away visiting children, while others are tightening restrictions on adults, too, in hopes of limiting spread of swine flu in the hallways — although there is little science the limits work.

Hospital spokesperson Diane Burke said via a release that this is a precautionary measure only, and a common sense approach to control the spread of the seasonal and H1N1 flu virus.

On October 20, Danbury Hospital announced temporary visitor restrictions would go into effect the next day prohibiting visitors and volunteers aged 18 or younger. According to the release, the regional medical center is also asking those visitors who have the following symptoms — cough, sore throat, and a fever of 100 degrees or more — to stay home and not visit the hospital.   

Those restrictions will be in force at numerous hospital facilities, including: Danbury Hospital Inpatient Units (includes the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit), Maternity and Pediatrics, Duracell Ambulatory Surgery Center, and the Praxair Cancer Center located at 24 Hospital Avenue.

Elsewhere in the country, the Associated Press reports that Utah and Colorado are recommending visitor limits for hospitals statewide. But mostly it is a hospital-by-hospital decision, meaning clinics in the same town can have different rules.

The result? Huge variation.

The large Stanford University Hospital in California on Monday barred anyone under 16 from visiting, while the small Central Vermont Hospital turned away the under-12 crowd. Other hospitals have settled on 14 or 18.

The Indiana Heart Hospital announced it is not checking for age but for symptoms: visitors are supposed to answer some questions and wear a green sticker showing they were cleared to enter.

Still other hospitals are trying education instead of rules, posting signs that urge people of any age to postpone that visit if they have a sniffle or cough. Atlanta’s Emory University is discouraging but not barring children — while stocking lots of hand sanitizer and face masks for visitors that, judging by frequent refills, are getting used.

“There’s no perfect way,” said Dr William Schaffner, a flu specialist at Vanderbilt University Medical Center, which is going with the signs but reassesses weekly. “We cannot hermetically seal the institution. You can have people who are going to get sick tomorrow who already are excreting the virus.”

It makes for a confusing time as hospitals struggle to balance the recuperative effects of having loved ones visit with the fear that they will carry in swine flu to people already weakened from something else.

On the other side, nurses describe some tears when new mothers learn they will have to go home before introducing all the relatives to the newborn. And hospitals hasten to say they make exceptions if, for instance, a family member is dying.

This is not about patients admitted for flu treatment; hospitals are supposed to follow specific infection-control steps for them.

The problem: There has been little study of whether curbing visitors, or screening them for symptoms, keeps flu from sneaking into other parts of the hospital.

Visitors are not the only risk. Health care workers might wear masks while caring for a flu patient, but they can catch the virus at home and bring it back to work. One major difficulty in fighting flu is that people can spread it up to 24 hours before their own symptoms appear.

Consequently, neither the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention nor the American Hospital Association have set guidelines on the issue.

Why so many child bans? Because this new flu, what scientists call the 2009 H1N1 strain, spreads so easily among children.

“This has not been a policy that has been taken lightly,” infectious disease chief Dr Yvonne Maldonado says in a video posted on Stanford’s website to warn the public of Monday’s change at the hospital.

But University of Washington epidemiologist Ira Longini, a well-known expert in how influenza spreads, calls banning all children “a little extreme.” He prefers for short-term visitors to wear a mask: “If somebody’s washing their hands and wearing a mask, they’re probably not going to infect anybody else.”

Vanderbilt’s Dr Schaffner recalls being a forlorn little boy waving to his father, hospitalized for appendicitis, from the street. Today, there is good evidence that support from family and friends can hasten recovery.

So in recent years, many hospitals have ended visitation restrictions outside of intensive care units or other especially vulnerable rooms, and even install fold-out couches and other amenities to encourage families to stay.

Stay tuned: The new limits are supposed to disappear when flu season ends.

Associated Press content was used in this report.