The second generation of H1N1 has started to spread through Vanderbilt's campus, with the number of students presenting influenza-like illnesses nearly doubling from 28 on Tuesday to 52 on Thursday.
Ten cases have been confirmed as being the H1N1 virus, Liz Latt, assistant vice chancellor for news and communications said on Thursday, the day after classes started.
Students on campus remain largely unconcerned about the strain of influenza A commonly referred to as swine flu.
“I'm not worried at all. I think people tend to panic with these things,” freshman Daichi Ueda said, adding that he hadn't done “anything special” to prevent catching the flu.
Other students like fellow freshman Lusi Zheng said she was washing her hands more, but she also thinks the panic over H1N1 has been “exaggerated.”
“It's the flu,” sophomore David Curran said. “People get sick, people don't get sick.
Worrying will do me no good. I will take the precautions and wash my hands, but I don't need to worry. I might go buy some vitamin C just in case.”
But during the first days of classes, professors have established new policies to keep students away from class if they have a fever of over 100 degrees and are presenting flu-like symptoms.
For her first-year writing seminar, Spanish linguistics professor Susan Berk-Seligson wrote in a policy about H1N1 into her syllabus from the health code established by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, advising that “those with flu-like illness should stay away from classes and limit interactions with other people (called ‘self-isolation’) except to seek medical care, for at least 24 hours after they no longer have a fever.”
Other professors including communications studies professor Claire King and managerial studies professor Cherrie Clark were also urging students to stay home and take care of themselves if they felt ill instead of risking passing the virus on to the rest of the class. Italian professor Elsa Filosa allowed an additional unexcused absence to her students to lessen the penalty of missing class.
Students think those precautions along with the prevalence of hand sanitizer throughout campus may play a role in keeping the spread H1N1 to a minimum.
“I think that it's smart to take precautions like hand sanitizer,” sophomore Meredith Crites said. “I think that if you're smart about it, there's not any reason to worry.”
The prevalence of H1N1 has begun to rapidly increase at other universities as fall semesters get under way.
John Maxwell, the director of the University of Alabama's student health center, told The Birmingham News that 54 people, the majority of whom were students, had tested positive for H1N1 by Tuesday, the first day of classes. The paper reported that the outbreak was thought to have started the week before with sorority recruitment.
Mississippi State's flu watch Web site was reporting 279 probable cases as of Thursday; Carnegie Mellon reported having 26 confirmed cases a day earlier. On Tuesday, the day after classes began at Auburn University, the university's medical clinic reported six cases of H1N1.
At Kansas University, a safety alert asked students to call, not visit, the student health center. There were no confirmed cases of H1N1 as of Wednesday, but the Laurence Journal-World reported 191 cases of people who said they've had flu-like symptoms since the semester began.
Georgia Tech officials told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution on Wednesday that they have about 100 cases of suspected flu on campus with 12 confirmed as being H1N1. Students have only been on campus a week, and a university spokesman said they were asking students with flu-like symptoms to isolate themselves to prevent the virus from spreading further.
But sometimes close contact is hard to avoid.
At Texas Christian University, football coach Gary Patterson told The Dallas Morning News that five players have H1N1, including running back Ed Wesley, Mountain West Conference's freshman of the year last season. On Thursday morning the student newspaper reported that the number of students being treated for H1N1 jumped from 10 to 88 in two days. The vice chancellor for student affairs said the university was no longer testing for H1N1, instead treating every patient presenting with an influenza-like illness as if he or she had the virus.
As of Thursday, the Vanderbilt Student Health Center was still urging any student with a “temperature greater than 100 degrees and cough or sore throat” to come in and be evaluated.
—Joslin Woods and Amanda Nieman contributed reporting.
