Influenza A HAN

Dear Laboratory Partners, 

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently released a CDC Health Advisory [nam12.safelinks.protection.outlook.com] to re-emphasize and accelerate subtyping of influenza A virus positive specimens from severely ill hospitalized patients. 

CDC recommends:

• Subtyping specimens from hospitalized patients who are influenza A virus positive as soon as possible, ideally within 24 hours.
• If on-site subtyping is negative for H1 and H3, or unsubtypeable, send specimens to your state public health laboratory within 24 hours.
• If subtyping on-site is not possible, send specimens to a commercial laboratory or state public health laboratory within 24 hours
• If commercial subtyping is positive for H5 (only 3 commercial assays exist), send specimens to your state public health laboratory.
• Collecting a thorough exposure history on these patients, including potential exposure to wild and domestic animals and/or animal products (e.g., raw milk and raw milk products, raw meat-based pet food)

The goal is to make results available while patients are still hospitalized, enabling more expedited investigation and implementation of control measures should the patient have influenza A(H5) virus infection. 

Please see the attached Health Alert Advisory for more information. Feel free to contact the Montana Public Health Laboratory if you have any testing-related questions (406-444-3444) or the Communicable Disease Epidemiology section if you have other questions related to this notification (406-444-0273)