How UMass Dealt With the Swine Flu
How UMass Amherst Dealt with the Swine Flu
By: Sara Afzal, Kirsten Swenson and Brendan Anthony
Prevalence of the H1N1 virus or swine flu at the University of Massachusetts has decreased, due in part to the availability of the vaccine at various scheduled flu clinics in the Amherst area and the precautionary measures the University has taken to prevent the spread of the illness.
“I think we’ve already peaked in terms of the illness for this particular wave. The other part of a pandemic that I really want to stress is that the one thing we know about the flu is that we don’t know what’s going to happen next. There’s still a lot of transmission going on,” said University Health Services’ (UHS) public health nurse Ann Becker.
In June 2009, the World Health Organization announced an H1N1 pandemic, a strain of influenza that is similar to a virus infecting the respiratory system of pigs. Young, healthy people are more susceptible to H1N1 because many born before 1960 were exposed to a similar strain of the virus as young children.
According to UMass public health adjunct Assistant Professor Marya Zilberberg, “University students are always a great target for easily spreadable contagious diseases. So, we will continue to need precautions.”
Most recently, UMass and the town of Amherst sponsored a flu clinic with 3,000 vaccine doses on Saturday, Dec. 12, at the town’s Wildwood Elementary School. According to UHS communications and marketing coordinator Karen Dunbar Scully, approximately 300 people were there at 10 a.m. when the clinic began.
Now that more vaccines have become accessible, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH) recommends the vaccine to healthy 25 through 64 year olds, and to adults 65 years and older.
The vaccine is either injected with a needle or inhaled via a nasal spray, which the DPH recommends as a safe option for those 2 years through 49 years of age and not pregnant. Those attaining the vaccine were required to bring a copy of their insurance card and completed registration forms.
“The inhaled vaccine was a little uncomfortable, I don’t really like things being injected up my nose,” said UMass communication and psychology major senior Ira Bondarevskaia. “But it was alright, it was less painful than the injectible [vaccine] would have been.”
“Me and my friends did injections on each other for our first injections, and it ended up really good, I didn’t get sick from it or anything,” said junior nursing major Shareece Burbo, who helped out at the Wildwood Elementary School clinic.
Initially, the vaccine was limited to high-risk groups, including pregnant women, people who live with or care for infants, health care and emergency medical workers, those 17 and under and anyone from 25 through 64 years of age with chronic medical conditions or a weakened immune system.
Lauren Cassidy, a senior English and public health major, did not chose to get the H1N1 vaccine. “I do not have any pre-existing health conditions, such as asthma or diabetes, and I was not pregnant. Not having any of these risk factors, I felt that the vaccination was unnecessary.”
The first swine flu clinic at UMass was held at the Mullins Center on Friday, Nov. 13, and was only offered to these high-risk groups because of the limited supply of vaccines. On Wednesday, Dec. 2, UHS made more doses of the vaccine available in the campus center auditorium to anyone interested in protecting him or herself against the virus.
Earlier in the semester, the University e-mailed students warning them not to attend classes if contagious with flu symptoms, including fever, cough, sore throat, congestion and vomiting or diarrhea, which are more common with the H1N1 virus than with the seasonal flu. The e-mail also told students that professors would accommodate sick students who missed classes.
“I think the University did a decent job at spreading about information to faculty and students,” said Cassidy. “I was impressed that most, if not all, of my professors and TAs discussed their knowledge of a possible outbreak and how in the case of such an emergency, how our classes and attendance could be affected and how missed classes would be dealt with.”
Cassidy works at the Du Bois Library reserve desk, where precautions like hand sanitizers, signs encouraging people to wash their hands and tissues are some of the measures taken to ward off sickness.
“The swine flu has been a difficult disease to predict and manage,” said Zilberberg. “Certainly early on it seemed that it had the potential to cause a lot of morbidity and mortality in the U.S., so preparedness was of the utmost importance.”
According to the CDC, the estimates of swine flu in the U.S. were between 34 million and 67 million cases recorded from April to Nov. 14, 2009. More than 95 percent of the increases in H1N1 cases, hospitalizations and deaths occurred between Oct. 17 and Nov. 14, 2009.
Medi-Gal 