Influenza Has Reached Peak Officials Believe

• Photograph of Canadian nurses who came to Boston to offer aid in response to Lt. Gov. Coolidge’s appeal• Slight increase in the number of deaths. Increase of 8 deaths from day before. • Dr. Eugene Kelley (state health commissioner): “No large communities report an alarming extension of the disease yesterday, and I believe that in Boston, which is by far the worst affected district, the epidemic has reached its peak.”• Kelley claims deaths in recent days were due to exposure to bad weather• Better weather gives hope for fewer deaths• Cardinal O’Connell provided St. John’s Seminary in Commonwealth Ave. as a temporary hospital. All equipment and buildings associated are at the emergency health committee’s disposal. Offer expected to be accepted. • 112 nuns volunteered as nurses. • Kelley estimates that not even 1/5 of influenza cases are reported because there are so many cases without medical attendance. • “Practically impossible” to know accurate number of cases in Boston. Probably true in other cities as well. • Hospital train dispatched to Quincy. 40 beds, 5-6 doctors, and 10 nurses. • 65 doctors from PA and NY expected to arrive within 48 hours. 46 nurses were dispatched to Boston and surrounding areas. More expected. • Ayer 1,500 cases and outlook for control of disease good• Physicians recommend getting out in open air, walking to prevent disease. • Hundreds picked up gauze masks from Red Cross. Volunteers made the masks. More than 8,000 masks made already and daily output estimated at 8,000. Supplies going to naval hospital at Chelsea and army camps.• Social workers took hundreds of masks and distributed them in poor sections of city, among affected families. • Teachers who volunteer as lay nurses or in other related capacities fighting epidemic will not be subject to a loss of pay (due to the closure of schools.) • Health Department ordered that no eating utensil used for public consumption should be used again unless it is properly sanitized through use of clean boiling water or other proper cleansing method.• Closing of Protestant churches made general today, in 20 mile radius from Boston.Newspaper article1,