A Boone County resident has been diagnosed with novel H1N1 influenza A, or “swine flu,” the Indiana State Department of Health said Thursday.
No further information about the patient could be released, ISDH spokeswoman Jennifer Dunlap said in an e-mail.
Releasing the age could lead to the identification of the patient, which would violate the Indiana Communicable Disease rule, Dunlap said.
It is the first H1N1 case in Boone announced since health agencies began tracking cases on April 20; the first infection was confirmed April 15. Of the 267 cases confirmed statewide, more than 200 are in either Lake or Marion counties. No deaths in Indiana have been blamed on the flu strain; 34 persons have been hospitalized.
Symptoms of H1N1/A are similar to seasonal flu: Fever, cough, runny nose, sore throat, body aches, headache and chills.
A “significant number” of victims have also reported diarrhea and vomiting, the CDC said.
Of the 34,000 Americans known to have been infected by the H1N1 strain, only 170 have died, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
While H1N1 infections in the U.S. were decreasing, the World Health Organization on June 11 issued its highest-level for a pandemic alert. The alert was based on the geographic spread of the disease, not on its severity, the CDC said. The WHO reported 300 deaths among the more than 70,000 persons confirmed infected by the virus.
It’s currently flu season in the Southern Hemisphere and the spread of the virus in Argentina has prompted schools there to give students an early vacation and one province to declare a public health emergency.
On Thursday, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius said the United States will provide 420,000 treatment courses of the anti-viral medicine Tamiflu to the Pan-American Health Organization to help fight the flu in Latin America and the Caribbean.
