Is flu to blame in 6 Salt Lake-area deaths?

Six residents of a Salt Lake-area nursing home have died in the last two weeks, possibly the result of an influenza outbreak that has sickened almost 25 percent of residents and nearly two dozen staffers and prompted quarantine measures, according to Salt Lake Valley Health Department officials.

Neither SLVHD or the Utah Department of Health would name the nursing facility, citing an ongoing communicable disease investigation and concerns over a federal patient privacy regulation. A GRAMA open-records request to each from the Deseret Morning News was denied.

Some 35 of 150 facility residents have gotten the flu since the outbreak began in the facility Feb. 11.

No death certificate or lab results have yet confirmed that the six residents died from influenza, said Dr. Dagmar Vitek, deputy director of SLVHD. "I'm not sure how to report it to you. It's not yet clear if all or none actually died because of flu."

Flu might also have provided a complication to an existing serious medical condition. Many of the residents in the nursing home are very frail, including a number who receive hospice services. That also impacts how many of them had flu shots, since residents and their families do not always choose to take steps like vaccines in the face of terminal illness, health experts said.

Nursing-home staff members immediately implemented quarantine-type measures prescribed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to control spread of the virus, according to SLVHD spokeswoman Pam Davenport. Among those, she said, were "lockdown limitations on visitors and flu shots again being offered for those who hadn't gotten one before."

Staff who were ill — 22 out of 160, although perhaps not all had the flu — were excluded from work, said Vitek. And Tamiflu, an antiviral that reduces duration, symptom severity and complications of influenza, was prescribed for those with the flu.

"The facility was very proactive," Vitek said. "They closed their doors to new residents and visitors. They're doing handwashing, respiratory hygiene and everyone wears a mask. They canceled all gatherings and group activities, and all the residents eat in their rooms."

The communicable disease investigation will continue until Thursday. If no new flu cases are reported, life will return to normal for the residents and staff, Vitek said. That seven days covers the incubation period for influenza.