Ball Memorial Hospital has restricted its visitation guidelines in order to reduce the number of swine flu cases spread, according to a hospital press release.
Patients at Ball Memorial have been limited to two visitors per patient and only those visitors issued wristbands will be allowed to enter the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit. In addition, visitors younger than 14 are not permitted into the hospital until after flu season ends. People suffering from flu-like symptoms are also discouraged from visiting the hospital.
Will Henderson, the director of public relations and marketing at Ball Hospital, said there are five stages of swine flu severity, each with their own parameters and precautions. Stage one is the lowest number of cases, while stage five is epidemic level.
"We are currently in stage three, which has all these precautions and limitations," Henderson said.
A group of experts including epidemiologists, chief doctors of medicine and a panel of health experts determine the stages of severity for any disease and when the stages should be changed.
Henderson also said that if H1N1 case numbers decline, regular hospital policies would be reinstated. Ball Hospital's usual visitation hours are 11 a.m. to 8 p.m.
"Since the beginning of the school year, there have been 43 cases of influenza-like illness that are being treated as H1N1 [at Ball State]," Kent Bullis, director of the Amelia T. Wood Health Center, said. "But because the CDC [Center for Disease Control] is no longer doing confirmatory tests, [the cases] cannot be confirmed as H1N1."
Ball Hospital will be holding free H1N1 vaccinations for all health care workers, including police officers and fire department personnel, between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. Oct. 9 at the hospital. Those receiving the vaccine must not be pregnant and should be between the ages of 18 and 49.
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