By Chris Cobb
The Herald-Zeitung
Published May 1, 2009
With the number of documented cases of swine flu mounting, an already tenuous situation was pushed further to the brink of panic thanks to a widely circulated e-mail written by a local doctor on Wednesday.
Dr. Marcus Gitterle, an emergency physician working as an independent contractor out of Christus Santa Rosa Hospital — New Braunfels, penned an e-mail that claimed, among other things, that there were 10 to 25 times more swine flu cases than were being reported in the media and that hospitals would soon be overwhelmed and eventually run out of the anti-viral medication Tamiflu.
On Thursday, both the Austin-based medical group that employs Dr. Gitterle and the hospital claimed no responsibility for his comments and Dr. Gitterle’s e-mailed comments were roundly rejected by local health authorities.
MILWAUKEE – A hundred cases of swine flu in the U.S.? Health officials say there are likely more. Just how many is not important, they say. As the world faces a potential pandemic, swamped labs are not testing all possible cases. Getting an exact tally has taken a back seat to finding new outbreak hot spots or ways to limits its spread, health officials said.
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The specimens are coming in faster than they can possibly be tested,” said Dr. Jeffrey P. Davis, state epidemiologist in Wisconsin, where a lab helped spot the nation’s first known case, in a 10-year-old boy from San Diego.
New York, which has more cases than any other U.S. location, also has had to limit the samples it tests, said Dr. Don Weiss of that city’s health department.
“Sure, we’d want to diagnose every case, but we don’t have that resource,” he said. Instead of trying to confirm every sign of the virus, “we’re focused on where else is it going and how do we prevent it.”
