Catherine Macken has a theory about the rapid spread of swine flu: She blames it on spring break.
Macken, a theoretical biologist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, helped create a computer model to test the potential spread of a pandemic avian flu after the H5N1 outbreak appeared in Asia in 2003.
The notion that an outbreak of swine flu would come from Mexico six years later didn't really cross anybody's minds at the time — since scientists already knew where avian flu had started.
But taking a quick look at how swine flu is spreading from Mexico to Texas, New York, New Zealand, California, Spain and other areas, she does think she has an idea about the emerging disease pattern, she said.
"We saw bursts of cases from students that were in Mexico," Macken said. "I think because the Mexican outbreak started around spring break, that's why we're seeing it spread like this."
It's hard to model any disease in the early stages, and it's still unclear if the swine flu will turn more deadly in the United States or just peter out and die, she said.
"You really can't see the trends at this point through the noise," Macken said. "We were looking at an outbreak in Asia coming to the West Coast, and this — everyone was surprised because now the point of entry is Mexico."
So far, New Mexico still hasn't had any cases of the disease, said Chris Minnick, a spokesman for the Department of Health.
No patient has presented symptoms and the state lab, which would test samples with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta, has not received a single suspect sample, Minnick said.
"If the lab got a sample, the turnaround would be about one day," he added.
Still, if cases show up in Santa Fe, Christus St. Vincent Regional Medical Center is well prepared to handle them, said Dr. Kevin Garrett, the hospital's chief medical officer.
"Obviously, we're keeping an eye on it," Garrett said, adding that a team from several hospital departments met to discuss strategy on Monday afternoon.
"Everybody knows what other people are doing here," Garrett said.
The hospital also has a decent supply of Tamiflu, the drug used to treat the disease. As of Monday, it had 453 doses, and the Department of Health, which already has 681,290 doses of Tamiflu and 65,600 doses of Relenza — another flu drug — on hand, was expecting to secure more after the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention declared a public-health emergency.
If somebody came to the hospital with symptoms, staff would isolate them, put masks on the patient and any family members with them, and then take a nasal swab test, which can indicate a positive result in less than an hour, Garrett said.
If a test came back positive, the patient would be treated with Tamiflu, and samples would be sent on to the state lab for verification.
Any hopes of using the LANL model to track the new outbreak are probably far-fetched, Macken said, because the Department of Energy stopped funding for the model in 2007.
If the Department of Energy determined the model were a priority, scientists could probably revive it, but by then the outbreak would be much farther along, and its track would be fairly obvious, Macken said.
Still, she finds it interesting that the disease has caused much more severe cases in Mexico than it has in the United States so far. That could be because of yearly flu vaccines here, or because exposure to past strains of influenza in the United States have made U.S. residents more resistant to this strain.
"I think one of the hopes is that this virus from swine has some remnants of a virus humans have been through in the past," Macken said.
But Garrett said he thinks rushing out to get the past season's flu shot, if you didn't already get one, won't do much, if anything, to help.
"This is a completely different strain, and there's no coverage that's being provided for it by those flu shots," he said.
If people decide they want to get one anyway, the Department of Health still has a supply available, Minnick said.
To find out where to get one, visit
nmhealth.org.
As far as general prevention techniques, the advice from the old lab model isn't all that surprising, Macken said. Diseases spread more easily in densely populated places, so avoiding crowds, keeping windows open at meetings and staying away from people who appear sick are all good strategies.
It's also important to note, though, that the flu typically waits about a half-day from transmission to when symptoms first appear. And people are often infectious during that time, even when they don't appear to be.
"It's really important to just be aware of who you've been in contact with," she said.
The flu is usually transmitted through sneezing and coughing but also handshakes and other bodily fluids.
So the easiest thing, actually, is just to wash and dry your hands a lot, Garrett said.
"You want to avoid contact with sick people, cover your mouth and nose when you sneeze and, of course, wash your hands," Garrett said.
Contact Sue Vorenberg at svorenberg@sfnewmexican.com.MORE INFORMATION
- New Mexico swine flu hot line: 866-850-5893
- Nurse Advice New Mexico hot line: 877-725-2552
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