OSHA: Use airborne precautions with H5N1
OSHA: Use airborne precautions with H5N1
Agency issues guidance for workers
Be prepared with isolation rooms and airborne precautions for patients with suspected H5N1 avian influenza infection.
That is one message in a new guidance from the U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration, "Protecting Employees Against Avian Flu" (www.osha.gov/dsg/guidance/avian-flu.html).
The guidance mirrors the recommendations of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), but it differs in important respects from the recent planning documents for pandemic influenza.
It states that patients who have traveled within 10 days to a country with avian flu activity and are hospitalized with severe fever and respiratory illness or are being evaluated for possible avian influenza for other reasons should be placed under airborne precautions. Health care workers caring for the patient should use N95 respirators, face shields and goggles, and gloves and gowns.
The CDC is currently reconsidering that guidance and will be issuing an update, says Michael Bell, MD, associate director for infection control at CDC's Division of Healthcare Quality Improvement.
"It was based on concern that because SARS and avian influenza arise from the same part of the world and they may look similar at first, we didn't want to miss any cases of SARS," he says.
The primary occupational risk for avian influenza occurs among poultry workers, Bell notes. Transmission to health care workers has not occurred even when infection control precautions were lacking.1
"Despite the very large numbers of people exposed to avian influenza virus, the impact on health care workers has been essentially zero," Bell says.
Meanwhile, hospitals and public health authorities need to continue to be aware of the signs and symptoms of SARS, he says. Infection control experts expected SARS to return a year after the outbreak in 2003, and they don't know why it disappeared. "We need to continue to be vigilant and ready to respond appropriately," Bell says.
Reference
1. Schultsz C, Vo CD, Nguyen VVC, et al. Avian influenza H5N1 and healthcare workers [letter]. Emerg Infect Dis [serial on the Internet]. Accessed December 2006. Available from http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/EID/vol11no07/05-0070.htm.
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