Nearly 500 immigrant children living at a temporary shelter at Naval Base Ventura County in Port Hueneme will receive pneumonia and flu vaccinations Friday in response to a handful of infectious disease cases.
Three teenagers living at the shelter were diagnosed with pneumonia last week and taken to a local hospital where they were treated with antibiotics and are "improving tremendously," Ventura County Public Health Officer Dr. Robert Levin said Tuesday.
"I don't see any likelihood that we're going to be seeing an outbreak of any kind there," Levin said. The kind of pneumonia that was diagnosed typically displays symptoms within a couple of days after being exposed, he added.
Levin has responded to the shelter four times to consult on communicable disease concerns since it opened five weeks ago in response to the influx of unaccompanied children crossing the southwest border.
There have been some cases of fevers and colds, but Levin said it was "not a tremendous number" of "fairly routine pediatric problems" considering the shelter's maximum capacity of 575 children ages 13 to 17.
Despite rumors of swine flu spreading among children at the shelter, Administration for Children and Families spokesman Kenneth Wolfe said there have been no cases.
Since opening June 6, the Port Hueneme shelter has been a temporary home for 1,400 immigrant teenagers — primarily from Guatemala, El Salvador or Honduras — apprehended illegally crossing the U.S.-Mexico border without a parent.
"It's not surprising when you bring a bunch of children together from different places that there's going to be some kids that get ill," Levin said. "We have pediatric clinics in our county that are filled all the time with our own county residents because kids get sick."
New immigrant children arriving at the shelter would most likely not receive the additional pneumonia and flu vaccinations, Levin said.
The 42,000-square-foot Navy facility was one of three temporary shelters opened at military sites to relieve the 100 permanent federal shelters near the U.S.-Mexico border.
When unaccompanied children are detained at the border, Levin said they receive vaccines for chickenpox; tetanus, diphtheria and pertussis; meningococcal disease; and measles, mumps and rubella.
The children are also checked for scabies and lice, screened for tuberculosis and undergo a mental health assessment, according to the Department of Health and Human Services, which takes unaccompanied immigrants under age 18 into custody within 72 hours of being detained.
The Administration for Children and Families provides short-term housing until the children can be placed with a family member or sponsor in the United States leading up to their immigration court hearing.
To date, 920 immigrant children have been temporarily housed and discharged from the Port Hueneme shelter, according to Wolfe.
"There's been absolutely no evidence of any kind that there's been any disease transmission outside of this compound to the general population in our county," Levin said.
Levin said Health and Human Services and Southwest Key Programs — the nonprofit contracted to handle day-to-day operations of the shelter — is "doing a terrific job of providing a very clean and healthy environment for these kids in the short time that they have them."
"They are sparing no effort to make sure that they (the children) are receiving preventive services and acute care services that this population would need," he said.
The shelter has an on-site medical team of nearly 50 people, including three nurse practitioners or physician assistants, five registered nurses, five licensed vocational nurses, five certified nursing assistants and 30 master's-level behavioral clinicians, according to Robert Garcia, the regional administrator for the Administration for Children and Families.
Dr. Ramsey Ulrich, medical director for West Ventura Medical Clinic, was contracted by Southwest Key to staff the shelter with a physician or midlevel practitioner for eight hours a day.
The Port Hueneme shelter has a 20-bed infirmary where contagious children could be kept for a couple of days if they could potentially spread an infectious disease to others, Levin said.