Dr Hannes de Villiers, of George, said he had seen a lot of people who suspected they had swine flu but had ordinary flu. “We are fully booked every day,” he said. “I think people are panicking at this stage.”
SHOOT: Guess that's why it's called a pandemic, because it spreads everywhere, to everyone.
SHOOT: Guess that's why it's called a pandemic, because it spreads everywhere, to everyone.
Garden Route doctors have been inundated by people fearing they may have contracted swine flu, according to pathologists who have been processing hundreds of tests every day. But Dr Daleen Brink, who conducts tests for Path-Care Laboratories in George, said yesterday that the number of requested tests had dropped off over the past two weeks after they asked doctors to examine only high-risk patients and not everyone reporting with flu symptoms. “We were receiving between 600 and 800 test requests per day for the Western Cape,” Brink said. “Now, it has dropped down to around 200 tests per day.” She added that about 20% of the tests were positive for the A(H1N1) virus. By Wednesday last week, Brink’s tests showed that 11 people in George had tested positive, four in Knysna, four in Plettenberg Bay and two in Mossel Bay.
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