INDIANAPOLIS – Indianapolis hospitals are limiting visitors as flu season shifts into high gear.

Hospitals will ban visitors under 18 and anyone the patient doesn’t identify as immediate family. The Marion County Health Department begins discussing the restrictions when the rate of flu patients in emergency rooms cracks three-percent. Hospitals crossed that benchmark over Thanksgiving week.

It’s up to the hospitals whether to implement the restrictions, but the department says all the county’s hospitals have agreed and will begin limiting visitors on Friday. Community Health says it will restrict visitors not only in Indy, but its hospitals in Anderson and Kokomo.

The restrictions will remain in place until emergency rooms report the rate of flu-like systems has dropped below one-percent. Melissa McMasters, the health department’s infectious disease coordinator, says that could be a while. Flu season typically stretches into February or March, and McMasters says the early start of flu cases this year suggests it could be a worse than average season. She says Australia experienced more flu cases than normal during the Southern Hemisphere’s winter earlier this year, another indicator of a bad year.

The visitor rules represent the least restrictive of three tiers of restrictions. If flu gets worse, hospitals could begin screening all visitors for flu symptoms before letting them in. McMasters says the county has never taken that step, nor the most restrictive policy of all — banning visitors entirely.

 

Image by Alexandr Litovchenko from Pixabay