U.S. officials are preparaing for as many as 1.8 million hospitalizations due to the pandemic.

Colleges and universities are managing outbreaks in different ways. Some are creating a large sick bay and letting well students go about their days. Another report tells of a school which created a “well bay,” letting the sick students stay in their own rooms and sleep.

And everything in between.

If a vaccine is developed and shipped, lower level schools will become vaccination central in a way they have not been since the mid-1950s when the polio vaccine was developed.

The CDC has issued specific guidance for schools, family care-givers, businesses and more. You can find those at Flu.gov.

What Can You Do Now?

Young people with underlying, chronic conditions are at higher risk for complications: Make a plan.

- If you have anyone in your family with a serious underlying condition, read about how to care for them at home and speak with the patient’s doctors about what symptoms signal a need for immediate medical attention. Ask before everyone needs to know what to do. Create your patient’s own checklist, warning signs and other important information now. It won’t take long. It will prepare you and your patient for any scenario. That gives you some peace of mind.

The younger your family members, the more important it is to have a plan in case more than one person is ill at a time.

- The younger your family members, the better prepared you want to be. This pandemic affects younger people more than older ones. You want to plan for having more than one ill family member at the same time, in case that happens. One young mother tells of her family’s spring experience. “Everyone—my husband and both kids were sick and they were really sick. There was a lot going on on both sides of our families in other ways. I just kept willing myself not to get sick. Fortunately, I didn’t.”

One “fact” to check on with your doctor: Can someone who has had H1N1 get it again? Or, can that person safely care for someone who now has it? The pandemic is underway but is far from being at its peak.

- The assumption, which could change, is that once a person has had H1N1, that person will not have it again. If that assumption holds true, someone who has recovered can care for newly infected ones. However, ask your doctor.

Get all your shots, seasonal flu and, if available, pandemic flu vaccination. They not only help protect you but the higher the vaccination rate, the lower the infection rate in a community likely will be.

- In the last week, scientists say that there is no evidence that the pandemic virus will combine with the seasonal version to create yet another strain to worry about.  CDC statistics ending August 29, 2009, showed that the H1N1 (pandemic) strain is the cause of almost all influenza illnesses.  Nevertheless, this is not the year to skip any shots.

Bloomberg

“The U.S. is bracing for as many as 1.8 million hospital admissions for flu as students return to school and cases surge to unprecedented levels, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Director Thomas Frieden said.

“We generally expect that flu will go up after it starts, but this is really something we haven’t seen before,” Frieden said today on CNN’s “State of the Union” program. “It’s very unusual to see it start to increase this rapidly in August and September.”

Source: Bloomberg, September 6, 2009