82 infected with seasonal flu

In the course of the past few weeks, Prairie View A&M University’s health clinic has been coping with an outbreak of the flu virus that has threatened the health of many freshmen in the University College and other students on campus.
The origin of the flu outbreak is unknown, but one thing is certain: students fear the virus may spread more rapidly.
According to Thelma. J. Pierre, administrator of the Owens-Franklin Health Center, there have been 82 reported cases of flu on campus, dating from Aug. 31 to Sept. 12.
“During the first week of class, we had fewer numbers of students getting ill. However, the increase in statistics came after the Labor Day weekend, just as we had expected,” Pierre said.
The staff of University College has been forced to take safety precautions to protect residents.
Shandon Neal, assistant director of student and residential life in the University College, said, “The flu started around the first of this month. There were already several students experiencing flu-like symptoms before they came to the school. Consequently, the virus began to spread once interaction between students started.”
Some of the freshmen who have the flu said they were feeling symptoms before the second week of school.
Neal talked about how the students who were subdued by the flu had been asked to leave the University College and return home, if they were from the area.
Others were isolated by having their roommates relocated to another quarter of the freshmen dormitories, leaving the ill students in a room alone.
Although placing students in isolation was a solution for Neal and staff, it created another problem for Pierre and the rest of the health department.
Pierre said, “Before students are placed in isolation, we issue them a release form for all of their classes as a medical excuse. At first, we were experiencing issues with students in isolation, in terms of how they would get their food and basic supplies. It wasn’t our initial responsibility, but we decided to handle these issues. In collaboration with Sodexo, we devised a system in which we have volunteers wearing gloves and masks bring food to ill students.”
Even though this system has been working effectively, the health center does not have enough volunteers.
“We made an announcement to students at the general assembly regarding our need for new volunteers, but so far nobody has responded,” Pierre said.
All students placed in isolation remain there, until experiencing no symptoms for 24 hours, without taking any medication, officials said.
Although the flu outbreak is a serious situation, it hasn’t taken the student body, the staff, or administrators by surprise.
This school year ushered in a number of new students from different places, increasing PV’s enrollment from some 8,000 to an estimated 8,600.
Many students attending PVAMU came this school year unprepared for the weather conditions in Texas, which has forced their bodies to adjust to a new climate, health officials said.
“Given the fact that this is flu season, and you have so many students from different places whose bodies are learning to cope with the environment and interactions with complete strangers, an outbreak of this magnitude can be expected,” said Sheleah D. Hughes, Prairie View A&M University’s director of public relations.
The process of determining whether a person has flu or not involves two tests, one for type A and another for type B. Anyone who tests positive for both types is then tested for H1N1.
Those tests are shipped off to a lab, where doctors take up to 45 days to process results.
There has actually been no reported case of H1N1 influenza (swine flu).
Hughes said that so far test results have been negative for students who were automatically tested for H1N1 flu virus.