As the number of confirmed and suspected cases of swine flu continues to rise, students worry that self-quarantining will not be able to slow the spread of the virus in residence halls.
Alex Drexler, an 18-year-old resident of Cheyenne-Arapaho Hall, said he visited Wardenburg Health Center and was told to confine himself to his dorm room until his flu-like symptoms had cleared up.
“Quarantining in the dorms was not really successful at all,” Drexler said. “It was just hard because we share the same rooms, and bathrooms and dining halls.”
Like many other students, Drexler was not actually tested for the H1N1 virus, but was treated because of his flu-like symptoms.
Tamara Berkman, a 21-year-old senior communication major, said she began feeling sick last Friday and rushed to Boulder Community Hospital. At that point, they had stopped testing for H1N1, so she was told to return home.
“They said there was not much I could do and to just let the flu run its course, so I was stuck in my room for days,” Berkman said.
While self-quarantining was a successful process for Berkman, who lives off-campus, it is much more difficult in the residence halls where rooms, bathrooms and dining halls are all communal.
“I think it is going to be difficult,” said Paula Bland, director of Residence Life at CU Boulder. “However, I do think we have been fairly successful because we have seen such a consistent number of cases and the numbers aren’t spiking up very high.”
Bland said she is expecting there to be approximately 60 to 80 students who are sick throughout the residence halls at any given time.
The staff in the residence halls has also put together meal boxes that provide sick students with five days worth of food to get them through their illness.
“If students let us know that they are sick we will deliver them meal boxes with the typical food that sick people crave,” Bland said. “Soups, Jell-O, apple sauce, Gatorade, things like that.”
As a further precaution against the spread of the virus, Bland said the boxes will also be equipped with masks for students to wear when they must be in contact with other people, such as in residence hall bathrooms.
“I think people are starting to be very careful,” Bland said. “For students who are well, just continue to practice good hygiene and try to stay clean.”
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Lindsay Gulisano at Lindsay.Gulisano@colorado.edu.
