There have been nearly 700 hospitalizations due to swine flu in Wisconsin, in the last three months. Fourteen deaths were reported in the last two weeks. With numbers like those it's easy to worry, and hard to put the H1N1 danger in context. Just how great is your risk of exposure to the virus? WUWM's Ann-Elise Henzl visited a workplace to seek the answers.
Since spring when swine flu arrived on the scene, we've all heard advice on "covering our cough" and "washing our hands" to prevent the virus from spreading. But what's talked about less is how the H1N1 virus travels indoors.
To find out, I met with doctor Margaret Hennessy, of Wheaton Franciscan Health Care, in her office building in Racine. I asked her if you can get sick, if the person on the other side of the cubicle wall sneezes.
Margaret Hennessy: "I don't know if you've ever seen one of those pictures where they show a sneeze and it really extends out a good 3-6 feet. So if I sneeze and I don't cover my mouth, I could propel virus over a cubicle wall. So even if you're by yourself it still makes sense to follow these precautions: cough into your sleeve. Cough into your elbow. Avoid your hands so that you're just not likely to spread stuff."
Ann-Elise Henzl: "I know sometimes if I have a really big sneeze coming on, and I put the tissue over my face and I sneeze, I still can feel the breath pushing through the tissue. Are the germs really contained?"
Hennessy: "There's always a chance when you sneeze that you're not completely sealing in your nose and your mouth and something's going to escape. But a lot of it's going to be contained."
Hennessy says even if you're handling the same phones and elevator buttons as someone who's carrying the H1N1 virus, that doesn't mean you'll get sick.
"When you're worried about H1N1 on stuff, it has to be really wet. Even if I sneezed on this table but it's completely dry, the virus isn't that hearty. Within a couple hours it's not even alive anymore. So it really has to be wet stuff," Hennessy says.
Hennessy says to spread the virus to yourself, you’d have to touch your face with those wet hands. I was also curious about how safe it is to eat in a room where the virus might have been present. So Hennessy and I walked to her employee break room.
Henzl: "I think this is something that people in many workplaces can relate to -- a common area where food is eaten and where some people wash dishes better than others, some people wipe up after themselves a little bit better than others. In general, how big of a risk is H1N1 spread in an employee lunchroom?"
Hennessy: I'm not as worried about that. There's plenty of other stuff that I worry about, plenty of other viruses that I do worry about. But realistically, H1N1, unless someone's visibly sick in the lunchroom themselves, I'm not as worried about that."
Hennessy understands that swine flu is scary to some. But she says it's important to remember that many of us are successfully fighting it off.
"A lot of people that come in contact with H1N1 will never know they did. In fact, they've done research studies that showed two-thirds of the people that had positive tests never knew that they ever had it. So most of us are never going to know, it's the tip of the iceberg that has the most serious complications and ends up in the hospital," Hennessy says.
Hennessy says to improve your chances of avoiding swine flu, it's best to eat healthy, get enough exercise and sleep -- and, of course, wash your hands before touching your mouth, nose or eyes.
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