Colleges mobilize for new flu season
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By Gordon Dritschilo Staff Writer - Published: September 18, 2009
Colleges are stocking up on hand sanitizer and face masks as the threat of H1N1 looms and flu season approaches.
Nine students at Middlebury College recently confined themselves in accordance with a policy there asking students with fevers and other flu-like symptoms to keep to their rooms until 24 hours after the fevers break.
Mark Peluso, director of the college's health center, said Thursday that all of the nine had recovered from symptoms as of the previous evening. He also said the cases were not a cause for alarm.
"This is not a quarantine for H1N1," he said, later adding that "isolation" was a more accurate term than "quarantine." "This is a quarantine for influenza-like illness."
Nine of Middlebury's 2,300 students having flu symptoms was hardly a crisis, he said, especially when most of them recovered in a day or so.
Middlebury is ready for more such confinements, Peluso said, with residence life staff standing ready to bring meals to shut-in students and supplying masks for trips to the bathroom. He said sick students also have the option of going home for the duration of their illness.
The college has asked students to stock their rooms with thermometers, tissues, hand sanitizer, fever reducers and water or Gatorade in case they get sick and to have friends they can stay with should their roommates become ill.
William Allen, Castleton State College's dean of administration, said he was not aware of anyone with flu symptoms on his campus.
"College students can get sick at any time, so that could change, I suppose," he said. "What we've always done is if we have students who are ill, they go home."
Most of CSC's students still come from nearby enough that going home remains an option, he said.
In Poultney, Green Mountain College spokesman Kevin Coburn said officials there are also keeping an eye out for flu symptoms, but does not believe they have seen any yet. He said the school has plans in place to quarantine large numbers of students on one floor of a dormitory if necessary.
Back at Middlebury, Peluso said none of the nine students there were tested for H1N1.
"We don't recommend testing everyone with flu-like symptoms," deputy state epidemiologist Susan Schoenfeld said. "We don't do that in a normal flu year and we're not doing it now."
Schoenfeld said the Vermont Department of Health does want to test hospitalized patients and select patients with underlying conditions that swine flu could aggravate. She said a group of outpatient practices report weekly to the department on the level of influenza-like illness they see.
"We're only seeing sporadic activity so far," she said. "We're keeping an eye on things. … Last week there were 11 states reporting widespread flu activity, which is a lot for this time of year."
gordon.dritschilo@rutlandherald.com
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