Audio clip
Dr. Tim Jones
The swine flu outbreak believed to have originated in Mexico has not yet affected local travel to the southern country, officials and some North Georgia residents say.
“No one has canceled any bus tickets to Mexico yet,” said Guadalupe Salaices, owner of Carnicerias Nacho in Dalton, Ga. “There was a lady who is traveling to Mexico today, but she said if something was going to happen, it could happen anywhere.”
Dalton is home to at least 13,000 Hispanics, and officials with organizations that work with the community say most are from Mexico. Ms. Salaices said she generally sells about 25 bus tickets to Mexico each month.
Seven deaths in Mexico have been confirmed as swine flu, and the illness is suspected in the deaths of 152 others. Officials also suspect it has sickened about 2,500 in the country.
Tennessee and Georgia still have no confirmed cases of swine flu.
Victor Cervantes is manager of Cortez Insurance in Dalton, a company that also sells plane tickets. He said he hasn’t had any requests to fly to Mexico, but that’s not unusual because people usually travel during the summer or for Christmas.
In North Georgia, public health officials are working to inform the Hispanic community about the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s travel advisory, recommending against nonessential travel to Mexico.
County health departments have interpreters who are in contact with leaders in the local Latino community and the faith-based community, regional public health spokesman Logan Boss said.
U.S. airlines have not scaled back the number of flights to Mexico, said David Castelveter, spokesman for the Washington, D.C.-based Air Transport Association.
“What I don’t know is whether or not they’ve changed the size of airplanes in anticipation of less demand,” he said.
“Some carriers have said modest decline, but we haven’t seen anything significant,” Mr. Castelveter added.
In a conference call Wednesday, state medical epidemiologist Tim Jones said the Department of Health has tested 18 specimens for swine flu.
“None of them show swine influenza, so (it’s) good news,” he said.
Fourteen were completely negative and four showed the “tail end of the normal flu season,” he said.
Public health workers in Georgia are testing a specimen from a 36-year-old man who has flulike symptoms and who had been in close contact with people who recently traveled to Mexico, Mr. Boss said.
Health care reporter Emily Bregel has worked at the Chattanooga Times Free Press since July 2006. She previously covered banking and wrote for the Life section. Emily, a native of Baltimore, Md., earned a bachelor’s degree in American Studies from Columbia University. She received a first-place award for feature writing from the East Tennessee Society of Professional Journalists’ Golden Press Card Contest for a 2009 article about a boy with a congenital heart defect. She ...
Perla Trevizo joined the Chattanooga Times Free Press in 2007 and covers immigration/diversity issues and higher education. She holds a master’s degree in newswire journalism from Universidad Rey Juan Carlos in Madrid, Spain, and a bachelor’s degree in political science from the University of Texas. She was selected as an International Reporting Fellow by the International Center for Journalists and in 2009 received an honorable mention for her story “Families Broken Apart” from the Tennessee ...
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