Health and Wellness Services (HWS) no longer is seeing dozens of patients with flu-like illness every day, but they are seeing some. And so the advice still stands: wash your hands often, cough into your sleeve, stay home if you are sick.
Vaccine for the influenza A (H1N1) virus – the virus most likely responsible for recent flu-like illnesses on the Pullman campus and across the country – won’t be available until mid to late October, but seasonal flu vaccine is available on campus and at various locations in Pullman.
Paula Adams, communication coordinator for HWS, said it has been providing seasonal flu shots to students since early September, but starting Oct. 10 the vaccine will be offered to WSU employees as well, at a cost of $25 each. (Faculty or staff who want to be vaccinated immediately should contact their own health care provider, the Whitman County Department of Health, or pharmacies such as Sid’s Pharmacy, Safeway or Rite Aid.)
According to the Centers for Disease Control, the official start to the 2009 flu season is Oct. 4. But campus health officials hope they’ve seen the worst of the outbreak.
“We are prepared to see flu throughout the season, but we really can’t predict exactly what will happen,” Adams said. “Hopefully we stay at a low, steady pace rather than the peak we saw early in the semester.”
At the height of the outbreak at WSU Pullman – around Labor Day – campus physicians were seeing up to 60 students each day, and health services staff had contact with as many as 200 students daily, either in person or over the phone.
On Tuesday, 17 students contacted the student health clinic by phone or in person, Adams said, and eight of those people saw a physician, physician’s assistant or nurse practitioner. On Monday, 12 students contacted the student health clinic by phone or in person, and four students talked with a health care provider. For much of last week, about 10 students each day were asking for appointments with a health care provider.
Adams said it’s impossible to know how many people on campus have had the flu so far. Since the treatment for influenza-like illnesses is the same regardless of the type of virus causing it, both the CDC and the Washington State Department of Health recommended that health providers not routinely test patients for the H1N1 virus. Added to the problem of an accurate count, even if everyone who contacted HWS is assumed to have had H1N1, there is no way to determine how many people had the illness but never contacted HWS.
Timothy Moody, chief medical officer of the Whitman County Public Health Department, said one way to estimate total flu cases is to look at hospitalization rates. According to the CDC, hospitalization rates for H1N1 appear to be about the same as the hospitalization rates for other types of flu, which is about 1 percent.
As of today, 11 people have been hospitalized in Whitman County for the flu or flu-related complications such as pneumonia, Moody said. If you add WSU students who received IV fluids or were hospitalized because of dehydration, that brings the total to about 25, putting the total flu cases in Whitman County at about 2,500 so far this fall.
“That’s just a very rough estimate,” Moody said.
Typically, he said, Whitman County might see that many flu cases over an entire six-month flu season. But this year that happened before the start of the flu season, when health officials typically don’t see any flu cases at all.
“Once this stuff hits, it just goes like wildfire,” Moody said, but it seems to burn out after two or three weeks. A couple weeks ago some K-12 schools in the area were seeing absentee rates as high as 20 percent or even higher, he said, but this week the absentee rates are back to normal for this time of year.
“We’re seeing the same trend,” said Eleanor Finger, director of Residence Life. “The numbers are decreasing and I think people are really ready to move forward.”
Finger said Residence Life continues to have protocols in place to monitor and support students who are ill. But, she said, “our formal process gave way to informal community.”
For instance, she said, many healthy students just took it upon themselves to check in with their neighbors and help when they could.
For instance, she said, many healthy students just took it upon themselves to check in with their neighbors and help when they could.
“Students tended to rally around each other,” she said.
While WSU is hopeful that the worst of the outbreak is over, several other universities in this region are just now welcoming students back to campus. Classes at the University of Washington started Wednesday. Classes at Oregon State University started Monday and classes at the University of Oregon started Tuesday.
The American College Health Association has been collecting information from 274 institutions of higher education and has been reporting the information as state-by-state totals. For the week ending Sept. 25, Washington colleges reported the biggest decline in cases, while colleges in 21 other states were reporting increases. Looking at cumulative totals, 21 states reported cases of flu-like illnesses at reporting colleges peaked during the week of Sept. 25.
According to the CDC and the Washington State Department of Health, sample testing has shown that nearly all of the flu cases reported last spring, through the summer and this fall were caused by the influenza A (H1N1) virus, the so-called swine flu virus. However, as the weather turns colder signaling the start of the 2009 flu season, health officials are anticipating that the seasonal flu will begin making the rounds.
But, said Adams, there are no plans to test every person to determine which virus is causing the illness.
“We treat them both the same,” she said.
Seasonal vaccine shots provided by HWS cost $25. Check here for more information.
