H1N1 last summer

Neveranurseagain, RN · Oct 14, 2009

I am too, surprised no one discusses this issue with camps. I blogged this during the summer but no one posted anything:

"I know a few people that work for camps in Los Angeles County. Camps in this area have received letters from the LA County Health Dept informing them that anytime they have more than 5 campers with flu like symptoms/fevers that they need to report it to the Health Dept. The Health dept then shut the camp down once the nurse reported that she had several campers/staff with fevers and flu symptoms. They had to send all the campers/staff home. Anyone else dealing with this situation? "

knzygrl2 · Oct 19, 2009

I am at a camp out east. We had several cases but were able to keep it mainly in one age group. When the girls had a fever they went home until fever free for 24 hours then they could return. No camps where I was at were shut down because of flu cases, and believe me there were some camps that had alot of cases. I was at a 8 week camp, so the girls would be home for usually five days and come back to camp. We did a few things that I think really helped us contain it. Luckily we have a big healthcenter so we were able to truely isolate the sick girls. We had all the mattresses in the rooms switched to plastic, so we could wipe them down, we took out the self serve salad bar, and had someone passing out salad and dressing. We had a timeout at each meal, all of the dining hall would stand up and would sit down once they used purrell then once everyone sat down we would eat. We also took temps on the buses as the campers were on their way, we took temps 24hours later, then we would monitor bunks that had a case for the next 48 hours after exposure. I think we had it done and over with until visiting day then we saw more cases. For girls that had a fever we would test them with the rapid influenza a/b test. It was a very busy summer in the healthcenter for sure!! I think that was one reason you didnt see alot of chatter about it on here over the summer, because healthcenters were so much busier!!

Monica, RN

SnowbirdRN · Apr 22, 2010

We had a confirmed case at my camp, she was immediately sent to the ER with her mom when she hit 104 with terrible breath sounds. She ended up having bronchitis at the same time. Shortly after that, the Health Dept was in contact with me and helped clarify protocol. I told counselors to send any coughing or ill looking campers down to me and if they had a temp of 100.4 or higher they were immediately sent home (though some families lived farther away so the campers were isolated in the back). If I had any other campers with asthma or other resp. issues, I checked in with them regularly and called home just to let the family know what was going on at camp and they could pull out their kid if they were strongly concerned. I was the only nurse so let me tell you, it was HELL that last week (luckily it didn't hit till the last session!). I ran around with a chart of kids temps. I had about 30 kids with 99 and up. I didn't administer any antipiretics if they had a temp as to not mask a fever. I sent home about 20 kids that week (we only had about 100 campers). I told their parents the kid could come back after 24hrs of no fever without medication. Only one or two came back. We put hand sanitizer on all the kitchen tables and completely cleaned out bathrooms & the cabin that had the confirmed case (washed bedding, wiped down mattresses, etc.).

Next year we are making it protocol to call home if any camper gets a temp of 100.4 because we had a few of them pre-h1n1 confirmation and some of their parents were upset that they hadn't been informed their kid was sick.

I didn't isolate anyone with 99s because frankly, I didn't have enough space to do so and most of it was due to mild dehydration and running around.

If you have a camper with 100.4 or higher and you give them tylenol etc, do you isolate them? For how long?

ruaalien2 · Jun 1, 2010

I'm not a nurse, but it was my experience working at a camp in upstate NY last summer and helping out in the infirmary with the H1N1 cases (and other such cases) that got me interested in nursing. I'm almost done with my pre-reqs and hoping to start nursing school in the fall.

We had a large number of both campers and staff (including myself!) come down with h1N1 symptoms. They were immediately isolated into two bunks that were separate from the rest of the camp (and with the number of staff in there there were low key activities like A&C, board games and movies for them) and kept there until they were fever free for a full day. We had an EMT in camp whose main job was to take care of those kids. Most of them were also on tami-flu.

This camp had kids from all over the US, PR, Israel and England, as well as staff from Russia, so it wasn't like we could just send them all home. Campers who lived close by some parents picked up and returned them after a few days and some (most) decided not to.

It was an incredible experience to see how the staff all pulled together to help out and pick up any extra work. The health care team was amazing at handling it as well (and with a summer of all new health care staff besides the doctor and a part-time medic it was a rough summer with that).