Arrowe Park hospital swine flu cases under control

Jun 24 2009 by Carrie Catterall, Birkenhead News

HEALTH professionals say people shouldn’t worry about swine flu spreading in Wirral after two cases were identified in one week.

They spoke to calm people’s concerns on the Wirral peninsula ... as hundreds of people pass through Arrowe Park Hospital each week.

They said the two people who had contracted the disease had not come into contact with any patients.

On June 15, a man who worked in an office at the hospital tested positive for H1N1v infection – as reported in the News last week – and on June 19, a woman colleague also tested positive for the disease.

Workers who had come into contact with the pair said they were concerned about contracting swine flu and taking the infection home to their families.

But hospital bosses said it was important to continue working as normal.

An employee said: “We were told we had to stay in work, so at first we were anxious we may have also caught the disease.”

The Health Protection Agency said all people who had come into contact with both patients when they were infectious were treated with antiviral medication as a precaution.

The first patient was infection-free before returning to work and the second patient has not been in work for the past week.