Students, faculty and staff on campus may have to wait until the first weekend of December for the H1N1 vaccine, said Shirley Cleave, Associate Vice President Academic and leader of the H1N1 Response Team on campus.
Clinics have been happening throughout New Brunswick in October and earlier this month, but only for those in high-priority groups. These groups include health care workers, children, the elderly and people with chronic illness.
Cleave said the Department of Public Health has not designated students as a high-risk group for immunization because there are other groups at higher risk for complications from the virus.
“I think Public Health has to identify those that are most at risk and although we’d like to have our students and faculty protected as soon as possible, I think we have to be responsible for the larger community. There are other folks that are more at risk than our student population,” she said.
Last Friday, UNB announced their first laboratory confirmed case of the virus. The virus has been present on campus, but students have not been tested unless they have an underlying medical condition and are therefore at higher risk. A student tested positive with the virus on Thursday.
The university has not been keeping track of H1N1 cases on campus, rather tracking the population of classrooms on a daily basis to see how classes have been affected by the spread of the virus.
Cleave said that because no exact attendance is taken it is difficult to see how the virus has impacted class size.
“Attendance seems to be fairly consistent throughout the term, but we don’t have records comparing it to last year. So far there haven’t been substantial absences or differences in absenteeism in our sentinel classes,” Cleave said.
Cleave is adamant that students should get the vaccine when it is offered to them to avoid contracting and spreading H1N1.
“I certainly hope that students take advantage of the opportunity to get vaccinated,” she said.
“I’m sure there are some students that aren’t taking it as seriously as they perhaps should, but we don’t want students to panic either. Most people won’t be very sick, but the more people who are vaccinated the less spread there will be.”
Cleave’s words of advice to students who feel they are ‘invincible’ to the virus is that the vaccine will help to protect them and prevent the spread of the virus.
The Associate Vice President Academic said that it is unlikely that classes will be cancelled due to the virus.
“Students tend not to be sick for very long. So, we’ll just continue to monitor and, rather than a cut off point, it’s more looking at trends…If there is a huge change over three or four days we’d have to consider whether cancelling is a good idea. In reality, cancelling classes and having students gather in other places isn’t going to reduce the spread and the reason to cancel would be to reduce the spread or because there were lots of students who weren’t in class.”
Cleave said there are no new developments within the university administration as far as H1N1 management, only that they are continuing to track the virus and encourage preventative methods such as hand washing, hand sanitizing, following proper coughing etiquette and staying home if you suspect you are infected.
Symptoms of the H1N1 virus include high fever, sore throat, body aches and coughing, among others.
For more information about symptoms, prevention or about the work the university is doing regarding the virus you can visit http://www.unb.ca/flu
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