America's North Shore Journal

The Depart­ment of Defense is fol­low­ing its civil­ian coun­ter­parts with report­ing on the pan­demic swine flu's effects its per­son­nel and dependents.

All of the cases in the DoD report that are in the United States are also part of a state report. Just as with the states and the CDC, there can be a delay in the data being reported between sources.

Since April 1, mil­i­tary facil­i­ties have treated 1,327 cases of pan­demic swine flu, also called pan­demic novel H1N1. 722 of these patients have been active duty per­son­nel. 31 cases have been found in recruits, with the Marines hav­ing just over half of the cases.

These mil­i­tary facil­i­ties also treat fam­ily mem­bers and retirees. Only 14 retirees have been found with pan­demic influenza and 510 dependents.

Colonel Jonathan Jaf­fin, direc­tor, Health Pol­icy and Ser­vices, Office of the Sur­geon Gen­eral, dis­cussed the military's response to the pan­demic in a recent Blog­gers' Round­table. One of the points he made was that they are not just look­ing for pan­demic flu, but a wide vari­ety of ill­nesses that are com­mon in sit­u­a­tion where peo­ple are in close quar­ters. ILI's (influenza like ill­nesses) and noroviruses are two of the ill­nesses that can break out aboard ship or in a barracks.

Jaf­fin stressed the impor­tance of ser­vice mem­bers not report­ing for duty if they are ill. He reviewed a num­ber of pre­ven­ta­tive mea­sures such as fre­quent hand washing.

Col. Jaf­fin revealed that all sol­diers are being screened for pan­demic H1N1 before they are sent over­seas. The screen­ing is also being done on return­ing troops from cer­tain the­aters of oper­a­tion. In response to a ques­tion, he was able to report that the pan­demic flu had not affected any Army operations.

The fol­low­ing images are from the most recent DoD report. Please note the median ages for fam­ily and retirees. These are much younger ages than are seen with sea­sonal influenza.

DoD sta­tis­tics of pan­demic swine flu patients treat at mil­i­tary facil­i­ties 6-23-2009

DoD report of clus­ters of pan­demic swine flu activ­ity in the mil­i­tary 6-23-2009