Members of the Emory community gathered to discuss concerns regarding the H1N1 virus, also known as swine flu, yesterday afternoon at the H1N1 Town Hall Meeting in Winship Ballroom.

“Emory’s response to swine flu has been in all sorts of media outlets. This is just a way of getting information straight from the horse’s mouth without any filter,” said sophomore Adam McCall, Speaker of the Student Government Association (SGA).

Members of the panel included Director of Student Health Services (SHS) Michael Huey, Director of Residence Life Andy Wilson and Director of Emory’s Office of Critical Event Preparedness and Response (CEPAR) Alexander Isakov.

Although the meeting garnered low turnout, the podcasting of the event reflected the hope that the information would be available so that Emory students, families and employees could still be informed, said SGA President Alex Kappus.  

“I didn’t even know there was a swine flu meeting,” admitted College freshman Risa Nishitani. “It’s still something I’m concerned about, but I feel well informed.”

While the seasonal flu generally affects the very young and very old, H1N1 causes most illness in people between the ages of 5 and 24, Isakov said in a previous interview with the Wheel.

H1N1 concern ignited during the summer with 24 students reporting flu-like symptoms on campus. While the Turman South residence hall provided self-isolation space for 129 students infected with the flu earlier this fall, no one currently occupies the building, Huey said.

The panel addressed concerns regarding the severity of the illness, which is reportedly no higher than the seasonal flu.

The panel said that the majority of cases do not require hospitalization and that self-isolation has proven to be effective. Self-isolation helps to decrease the pace of the flu’s infectious rate, the panel explained.

“In order to make things more manageable we have to try to slow down the spread of the virus, so that they don’t spike all at once. The education and communication piece is extremely huge, that’s why this forum is important,” Isakov said.

It remains an ongoing recommendation that students who have the option should isolate themselves from the community when diagnosed with H1N1. Communal life may present difficulties because the vast majority of students share facilities, which can quicken the spread of the virus.

“I am very impressed by our students for inconveniencing themselves, knowing their friends may be struggling with [illness]. We haven’t seen the kind of anxiety and panic that some of us were thinking we might see,” Wilson said.

While some students have been proactive about separating themselves from their roommate or suitemates and fostering the isolation necessary to keep their peers healthy, Huey acknowledged that some students avoid seeking treatment for academic reasons.

“We’ve been concerned and we want to make sure that if students know they’re sick with influenza, they owe it to themselves to get properly evaluated treatment and they owe it to the people around them to get appropriate advice.

From our side, we just want the message to go out to students that, ‘Hey, if you’re sick, don’t submarine yourself,’” Huey said.

Following the H1N1 outbreak, large numbers of students were clogging the Emory Hospital emergency room because SHS was not open on a 24-hour basis, Wilson said.

Wilson said that there is now an after-hours clinic available for sick students. The clinics no longer seem necessary, but the mechanism exists should the need arise, he said.

The seasonal flu shot became available last week, which is six weeks earlier than the traditional late-October vaccination campaign, in hopes of preventing a double punch of H1N1 and seasonal flu this fall, Huey said in a previous interview with the Wheel.

He added that Emory ordered significantly more flu shots this year to accommodate for high demand.

While there’s currently no H1N1 vaccine available, Huey has projected its due date for around the end of October. Trials for the vaccine began in August.

“Emory is going to be a distribution vaccination site,” Huey said. “The tougher question is at what point do we bring students forward, which then becomes a matter of following the CDC [Center for Disease Control]’s lead.”

For students who missed the H1N1 Town Hall, the podcast can be found on the Emory website and the Emory SGA website.

“Everyone is going to have access to this important information,” McCall said.

— Contact Roshani Chokshi