As cold weather and new students arrive on campus this fall, College officials are taking additional steps to deal with the potential spread of the H1N1 virus, more commonly known as swine flu. Vaccinations for the disease are slated to arrive this October, according to John Turco, director of Health Services, after which Health Services plans to begin offering clinics to immunize students and employees.
Students are more likely than most adults to contract H1N1 because the disease is more easily spread in dormitories and other shared living environments, according to Turco. Health officials, however, are not very concerned about the severity of the disease, which is typically not life threatening among healthy adults, he said.
"It looks like the overwhelming majority of the illness has been mild just about all of the deaths have been with individuals who have underlying conditions," Turco said. "This particular strain doesn't seem to be any more virulent than any other form of influenza."
As a result, measures taken to prepare for H1N1 this fall are largely the same as those for other types of influenza outbreaks during the winter months, he said. Rather than running specific tests for swine flu, Turco added, Health Services will recommend that students exhibiting influenza-like illnesses stay in their rooms to avoid spreading the disease.
"That means not going to class, not going to the dining hall, not hanging out in the common room with friends," Turco said, adding that students can enlist the help of friends and classmates to deliver food and other necessities. "It's going to be an inconvenience for a lot of people [but] it's really a community effort. If we all do our part, we can help make the nuisance factor less than it would be otherwise."
Vaccinations for seasonal flu viruses will be available early in Fall term, according to Turco, while H1N1 immunizations will "optimistically" be available in late October. The College will be running clinics during that time to distribute vaccinations to students and employees, he said.
"The goal would be by the beginning of 2010 to give everyone the vaccine," Turco said.
The Centers for Disease Control, which released its flu prevention recommendations for college campuses on Aug. 20, has recommended that people between six months and 24 years of age should be the first to receive the vaccinations. If Dartmouth's supplies are limited, the first batches of the vaccination will likely be prioritized for pregnant women, health-care professionals and individuals with underlying conditions that may exacerbate the symptoms of the disease, Turco said.
There are, however, some complications to the immunization process because health officials do not know whether adults will need one or two shots of the vaccine, and which age groups will be considered "adult," he said.
The Office of Off-Campus Programs does "not yet know" if vaccinations will be available to students who study abroad in the fall, John Tansey, executive director of Off-Campus Programs, said in a e-mail to students going abroad next term on Monday afternoon.
To prepare for a potential outbreak at Dartmouth, College officials studied cases in the Southern hemisphere because influenza is less common in the summer, making them difficult to study, Turco said, while June, July and August are winter months below the equator.
"The thing that's become clear is that there were many, many cases in the Southern hemisphere," Turco said, adding that young adults are more susceptible to outbreaks.
Dartmouth's preparations come in the wake of New Hampshire's first H1N1-related death last week. The 22-year-old Hillsborough County resident who fell victim to the disease had an underlying condition that complicated her symptoms, according to a press release from the New Hampshire Department of Health and Human Services.
Other colleges in the United States are also taking strong precautions against swine flu in the coming months, The Chronicle of Higher Education reported. Some institutions have already reported more than 50 reports of flu-like symptoms this month. Duke University, for example, has kept one of its student apartment complexes empty to house high-risk students if an outbreak should occur, according to The Chronicle. The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign suggested that arriving students bring medications, a week's supply of food and a thermometer when returning to campus, The New York Times reported.
