Decline in Auckland

Levin Daily Chronicle, 21 November 1918, Page 3

Decline in Auckland

J DECREASE T:N DEATHS.

(Per Press Association). Auckland, November 21. There ds a gradual decrease in the severity of the epidemic. Deaths in h'ospita.l from midnight on. Tuesdiay to ten last night totalled 14. SYDNEY'S PRiECAUTIONS. Received fchlis day, '11.15 a.m. Sydiney, November 21. As a precautionary measure virulent influenza has been proclaimed a notifiable disease. ISOLATION—A LEADING CIFLE. "T.We chief cause of tlie rapid spread of the epidemic in Wellington," said an officer of tlhe 'Health Department, "is the comparative little heed people are paying to the principle of isolation. How oan it surprise anyone when you see hundreds of easel? in houses and ho. tels and boarding houses where no attention is being paid to isolating the case, and where everyone in the liousf saunters in and out of the room in which the patient lies, without dreaming of the risk they are taking of infection? Few people think of hanging a disinfecting sheet where the door should be,« yet the malady is far more contagious than half a dozen infectious diseases where such, ordinary precautions are insisted upon. How oan a wife help catching the disease if she insists on inhabiting the same room as her suffering husband P It would be a miracle if she didi not become infected. Children, too, are allowed to invade the sick-room a« though the patient only had a cold or a sore foot. It would be far better if parents would send the children out into the open street or the nearest recreation ground—anything to keep them away from the house.

"Wellington is now paying for her over-crowded state. Yesterday we found some twelve or fifteen .Assyrians crowded into one -tiny little place in Haining street—a hovel, reeking with humanity. One of them was taken away in a bad state and died. Is it any wonder if the others develop the disease P In another place we found a maniacal man in the same room with a child in a dying state. If sudh conditions are to prevail andi people wall be stupid enough to encourage the contagion, I am afraid we have not reached the worst of the epidemic yet. In a few places we have visited people have had the eense to take precautions, but suoh are in a distinct minority." ONLY DIRECT INFECTION. Dr. Makgill, Acting-District Health Officer, states that some people seem to be scared that contact with attendants from the hospitals would cause infection. As a matter of fact, lie pointed out, there is no clinical evidence that the disease is carried! by a third person. All agree tlint the transmssion of the infection i* dire: tly from one patient to another. The organisms carrying tlhe disease die very rapidly and those worJtinjr in laboratories experience the greatest difficulty in making investigations owing to the rapidity with which the organisms die. •

This fact easily explains that the organisms that lodge in clothes die so quickly that the clothes of those in contact with patients carry no disease. A patient in the early stages by coughing and laughing may eoatter organisms in an area, up to six feet. Beyond that there is little harm.

Dr MaJfgilll expressed, a great desire that the public should be emphatically notified that there is little dianger of infection through contact with those handling patients. That fact could not be too well and widely known when tfhere was a slight tendency towards panic. AN IMPORTANT EXPERIMENT. The isolation of the bacillus which is the cause of the present epidemic has been successfully earriedi out by Dr. de Olive "Lowe, of Auckland, who states that the germ is the bacillus influenzae and it gives rise to the true influenza. Dr Lowe has prepared vaccine from cultures of the germ and in the presence of ai Star reporter h© treated himself to an injection of the vaccine representing 25,000,000 bacilli, including a proportion of those adventitious germs responsible for the deaths of so many people in the last two or three weeks. At the time of treating himself witji the vaccine the doctor was suffering from an attack of influenza, his temperature being 99.2. He .hopes that as a result of the injection the temperature and other symptoms of the disease will disappear, and to this end he will make observations' -and make further injections if he considers them necessary. Should the vaccine prove successful, he is prepared to supply as much' as is necessary within the limit? of his laboratory, for use by medical men free of charge. 'It is understood "that the Health. Officers do not care to use vaccine without further experiment considering that its efficacy ana action are not weJl enough known.