Area hospitals are placing restrictions on visitors to help curb the spread of the flu.
Walk through the sets of automatic doors into the lobby of Deaconess Midtown and you’ll see a stop sign printed on a piece of paper.
Under the stop sign are the hospital’s new visitor policies. You can visit a patient if you’re over fifteen and are immediate family or a close friend, but stay away if you’re showing signs of the flu.
"Our patients that are here as in-patients are much more vulnerable than others in the community," says Dawn Rogers, the hospital's infection control officer. "They tend to be a little more immunocompromised."
Rogers says local hospitals work closely with the Vanderburgh County Health Department every flu season to monitor the situation.
"Obviously we haven’t seen the significant increases that we saw last year," she says. "But over the past couple weeks, we are seeing an uptick."
Rogers says they’ll keep an eye on the number of new cases and consider removing the policy once they go down.
In the meantime, she says it’s not too late to get your flu shot.