2,000 Washington State Students Report Signs of Swine Flu
At least 2,000 students at Washington State University have reported symptoms of the H1N1 flu virus, university and local health officials said, in what appeared to be one of the largest outbreaks of the virus on a college campus.
“It’s real,” Sally Redman, a registered nurse who works in student health services at Washington State, said Saturday. “We’ve had a constant stream of people.”
So far, the cases at the university have been relatively mild, although at least two people in the area who are not students were hospitalized. The university, based in Pullman, in eastern Washington near the Idaho border, has about 19,000 students at its main campus.
Ms. Redman said the outbreak appeared about Aug. 21, during fraternity and sorority rush but before classes started. After that, she said, “it was rampant.”
As many as 200 students a day have visited or called student health services, reporting sore throats, fevers as high as 104 degrees, muscle aches and coughs.
Dr. Timothy J. Moody, the public health officer for Whitman County, which includes Pullman, said that after a few sample tests at the university were found to be positive for swine flu, students with similar symptoms were also classified as having the virus. He noted that since the spring, nearly all influenza viruses tested from people nationwide with flu symptoms had been H1N1. [New York Times]
