Testimony of Randi Weingarten before NYC Council Health & Public Safety Committees
Jun 12, 2009 10:43 AM
Good afternoon, and thank you for this opportunity to testify today on New York City’s response to the H1N1 flu virus and assessing our influenza preparedness. My name is Randi Weingarten, and I am president of the United Federation of Teachers (UFT), which represents approximately 110,000 employees in New York City’s public schools as well as several thousand hospital and visiting nurses.
I’d like to begin by again offering our condolences to the family, friends and colleagues of Mitchell Weiner, the assistant principal at IS 238 in Queens, who died on May 17th from complications of the H1N1 flu that he likely contracted in an outbreak at his school.
We also want to offer our condolences to the family of a more recent H1N1 flu victim, a student at IS 609 in Brooklyn who died on Sunday. We are still gathering information about this and we are reaching out to the staff and the school community to offer guidance, counseling and any other support they might need.
At this point we’d also like to thank all of our educators, nurses and the school communities who have been incredibly heroic in the face of the flu epidemic.
Because this flu spread quickly through the school system beginning first in Queens and now in all boroughs, I’d like to give you some background on our experience.
As soon as the union became aware on Saturday, April 25, that flu cases at St. Francis Preparatory High School were probably of swine origin, we began putting a plan into action. By the time the federal government declared swine flu a public health emergency on April 26, the UFT had consulted with the Commissioner of the Office of Emergency Management as well as representatives from the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene and the Department of Education. We also issued a fact sheet on the swine flu virus for distribution to UFT district representatives and school reps – we call them chapter leaders – throughout the city.
The UFT fact sheet provided an overview of swine flu, including symptoms, transmission routes and preventive measures as well as joint UFT/DOE/DOH health and safety protocols. These protocols included increased cleaning and disinfecting of restrooms, cafeterias and doorknobs in common areas, making sure that all restrooms are stocked with soap and paper towels, opening windows to ensure the building is properly ventilated, running ventilation systems with maximum outside air and providing disposable respirators to the school medical offices. In addition, ill students with fever and flu-like symptoms were to be isolated in the medical room and not returned to the classroom or general office.
Although the UFT is not a designated emergency first responder, our preparedness was critical to assisting schools in dealing with the potential flu epidemic.
Let me describe the scene at PS 177 in Queens on Monday, April 27, and the reports we received that afternoon. Here is how one report read: “PS 177 has had one child hospitalized over the weekend with flu and an assistant principal was taken by ambulance to the hospital today. Additionally 10 students have been sent home today with symptoms and two other staff members, a para and a teacher, are ill. This is a total of 14 people from the school with flu or flu-like symptoms. There are approximately 480 students and 200 staff in the school. It is located about 5 blocks from St. Francis Prep. Several staff members have spouses or children who work at or attend St. Francis.”
When UFT staff arrived at PS 177Q early the next morning on April 28th they found confusion about how to proceed. There was no doctor on site, no respirators and no plan in place. The UFT quickly put together a set of protocols for how to proceed during a flu outbreak and these protocols have served as guidance for schools citywide.
UFT representatives and safety and health staffers spent the day at PS 177 assisting the school in dealing with this situation, interviewing school staff and providing the school with disposable respirators, gloves and alcohol-based sanitizers. The union recommended that the school close, which it did on April 29 for a week. There were five confirmed cases of swine flu at PS 177, which reopened on May 6.
Flu outbreaks began to occur in many other Queens public schools and have now spread citywide with schools in each borough reporting flu outbreaks. Regardless of the school or borough, the outbreaks are similar, and the following story from IS 227 in Queens could have just as easily come from a school in any of the other boroughs.
IS 227 Chapter Leader Tom O’Brien described what the school had been like during one week in May: “In my 30 years of teaching, I’ve never seen so many kids fall sick so quickly. Everyone feels under siege. One-third of our school population has been out sick this week, and we had 20 out of 98 teachers out today.
“Our medical staff is overwhelmed. We ended up having to use the science room across the hall from the medical suite when that was overflowing with students; 81 students were sent home on Tuesday.”
What has made it all work has been the tremendous cooperation by everyone involved, from teachers to administrators, the union, parents and students, O’Brien said. “Colleagues are taking kids from other classes, changing schedules and working in concert with administration and medical personnel to get through the day in these very unusual circumstances,” he said.
The UFT monitored each school by sending union staff there, maintaining contact with each chapter leader and, in turn, maintaining constant contact with the Department of Education and the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene. We collected information about each school with flu outbreaks, including the number of absent students and staff and how many students and staff with fever or flu-like symptoms were sent home each day. Over 900 schools have been providing this information to the union, and we in turn provide all this information to the DOE and DOH.
The UFT also set up a special Web page containing a set of recommendations for schools, plus additional useful links to health information sources, available on our website at www.uft.org.
The DOH and DOE were assessing the situation in the schools daily. Decisions regarding school closings and other measures were being made on a case-by-case basis. Although information about H1N1 was provided (including guidance that sick students and staff should stay home), no one knew what to do in the midst of a spreading contagion. No one knew the criteria for assessing when to close a school. Information was not being provided to the school communities and the UFT about why one school was being closed and another wasn’t when both seemed to have similar flu outbreaks. As a result, concern and panic were spreading throughout the school system. For example, on May 16, parents were protesting outside a Brooklyn school to have it closed based on a single case of flu while parents at other schools with 15, 20 or 25 students being sent home sick with fever or flu-like symptoms had no idea what was going on.
So on May 21, the UFT held a press conference outside IS 227 in East Elmhurst. To help prevent the spread of influenza-like illness and reduce panic, we urged the DOH and the DOE to provide parent and the public with accurate information in a timely manner, including the rationale and criteria for closing a school. Subsequently the DOE began posting school attendance rates on their website and the DOH has been posting rates of influenza-like illness in schools on their website along with their rationale and criteria for closing a school. This has gone a long way to reassure our school communities.
In light of our experience, including this recent passing of the student at IS 609 in Brooklyn, we are calling on the Department of Education and the Department of Health to take two key steps:
First, immediately begin notifying school communities, including parents, of any confirmed cases of influenza in public schools. Specifically, we are asking that in any school where a case of the flu – swine or other strains – has been confirmed that letters be sent to notify staff and parents so that those with underlying medical conditions can take appropriate precautions. Some might say this is an overreaction, but if this step can help prevent another student death, then it needs to be implemented so that parents can know the system is doing everything it can to keep children safe.
Secondly, because we know that influenza will likely resurge in the fall as it typically does, we call on the Department of Education and the Department of Health to begin strategic planning now, including a review of existing health protocols, and have in place by September a comprehensive system for addressing the flu.
In addition to these steps, the following are our recommendations for an Influenza Preparedness - Action Plan for Schools (and other workplaces):
Emergency Preparedness Plans – Prepare and provide to schools a written flu epidemic plan that includes outlining local, state and federal contacts and resources, protocols and preventive measures to reduce the spread of flu, purchasing of the necessary personal protective equipment and supplies including thermometers, isolation policies and guidance for people at risk of complications from the flu.
Transparency and Disclosure of Information – The city should quickly get information out to the public and workers that includes not only the health hazards of the flu virus and steps to take to reduce the chance of spreading it, but also guidance and directives on how the DOH is assessing and monitoring schools, worksites, shelters, etc. and on what basis decisions are made to close these sites. Not sharing this information can lead to widespread panic. There also needs to be a road map or set of protocols outlining what to do when influenza begins showing up in the school building and spreading through a school or other building. Be transparent with information and outline the rationale and criteria for monitoring and closing a school due to influenza-like illness.
School Nurse in Every School – The school nurse is the key person for assessing and determining the level of influenza-like illness in the school, so there should be a nurse in every school.
Consider impact of closing community hospitals and other healthcare facilities – We know this is an extraordinary time of economic crisis, but it is precisely at such times that we need a comprehensive vision in order to plan ahead. As we noted earlier, this flu or some other strain will likely resurface in the fall. Closing community hospitals in Queens just as a potential flu epidemic was unfolding further victimized the community and overburdened existing healthcare facilities and doctors’ offices.
Specifically, St. John’s Queens Hospital in Elmhurst and Mary Immaculate Hospital in Jamaica closed in March after filing for bankruptcy protection. Even though they closed before the flu outbreak, their absence during the epidemic caused chaos and overburdened all the remaining hospital emergency rooms in the borough, resulting in very long waits and tents being erected at one Jamaica hospital. Our communities need adequate healthcare staffing citywide, and any change in the availability of medical resources can have a significant impact on the community and its public health. City health officials should keep this in mind when they consider closing or cutting back city healthcare facilities because of budget cuts.
