Coloradans who walked into emergency rooms with fever and chills Monday were masked and sent immediately to negative-air-pressure rooms designed to contain the spread of germs.
Nurses took stock of gowns, masks and other supplies, preparing to share with other hospitals around Denver should an epidemic of swine flu hit the city.
And yet at Denver International Airport, airplanes from Mexico arrived as usual.
Travelers who had worn masks around Mexico City, avoiding soccer matches and schools before boarding planes, disembarked in Denver without masks into what they said felt like relative safety.
On Monday, there were no confirmed cases of swine flu in Colorado, though a few suspected cases were pending lab results, according to the state health department. The sickness is suspected of killing 149 in Mexico, and 50 cases have been confirmed in the U.S., including in nearby Kansas and Texas.
“It’s literally a plane flight away,” said Chief Medical Officer Ned Calonge of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. “It’s hard for me to predict which flight that will be.”
Getting ready for a storm
Colorado health officials urged people not to panic but at the same time said they are bracing for a hurricane, so to speak.
“We’re putting the plywood on the windows, and we are getting ready for the storm, because once the storm hits, it’s too late to get ready,” said Dr. Dianne McCallister, chief medical officer for Porter Adventist Hospital in Denver. “I don’t think anyone should be hysterical. It’s more like when there is a tornado warning; you go to the basement — a tornado may not hit your house.”
Amid all the safety precautions, some questioned the lack of international-travel restrictions so far.
“If Mexico City has gone to the extent of canceling school, then doesn’t it seem logical that maybe there should be a travel alert?” wondered Dr. Connie Price, chief of infectious disease and director of infection prevention for Denver Health.
The major concern among state health officials is how fast the swine flu could spread.
“If you sneeze on me, I’ll be sick tomorrow or the next day,” said Dr. Kathyrn Holmes, a microbiology professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. “It can just spread like wildfire in a population that doesn’t have antibodies. We haven’t seen this virus before.”
Holmes said international health officials are still looking for answers that will determine “how scared we need to be.”
Still unknown is how quickly the swine flu spreads and its death rate, which will be calculated by comparing how many people were infected with the flu in Mexico City against how many died.
Colorado hospitals were instructed to send cultures for testing from patients suspected to have swine flu. People with flu symptoms — fever, aches, chills, congestion — were told to stay home, avoiding work or school. And state health officials, tapping on laptops in an emergency operations center, urged everyone to have a two-week supply of food and cold medicine, just in case they get sick.
Dr. Chris Urbina, director of Denver Public Health, spoke in Spanish during a news conference, urging immigrants with severe flu symptoms to go see a doctor — even if they don’t have documents.
At Rose Medical Center in Denver, a few more patients than usual were coming into the emergency department with flu symptoms. The hospital turned over at least two cultures for testing for the swine flu Monday.
The federal government has released 25 percent of Colorado’s share of the national stockpile of anti-viral drugs and will ship 166,000 courses of Tamiflu, the state health department said.
Travelers feel safer here
At DIA, gloved and masked federal customs agents checking travelers’ documents also handed out papers listing symptoms of swine flu and when to see a doctor.
“They might be feeling fine now,” said U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokeswoman JoAnn Winks. “They might not be feeling fine a couple of days from now.”
Travelers from Mexico City tucked masks they had used in Mexico into pockets and headed into what some said felt like welcome fresh air.
British schoolteachers Chris Knight and Anna Christou — who work at a private school in Mexico City that has closed because of the outbreak — reeked of hand sanitizer as they cleared customs, neck gaiters that they used to protect their mouths and noses on the airplane pulled down at last.
“Rather than stay quarantined in our home, we decided to come here,” Christou said.
They didn’t think they had been infected, Knight said. But if they do get sick, they would “be better here in the States,” he said, because Mexican hospitals “are overrun.”
Mexico-born Denver resident Eusebia Salgado, 62, returning after a two- week visit in Mexico, took a fatalistic approach.
“My body produces resistance,” he said. “If God wants me to die, I will die.”
In Mexico, air travelers filled out forms indicating whether they were sick before boarding.
Bus travel was more casual, with ticket agents in Denver reporting no altered procedures or schedules for the Mexico-bound travelers they serve.
None was wearing masks or even asking questions about swine flu, Los Limousines ticket agent Jose Cabral said. Some had other risks on their minds, Cabral said.
“They ask more about the violence in Juarez,” he said.
Jennifer Brown: 303-954-1593 or jenbrown@denverpost.com
