(CU Independent/Beth Schonberger)
The University of Colorado campus may be ahead of the rest of the state when it comes to contracting H1N1 flu.
According to the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, Colorado hit its peak of a wave of H1N1 cases last week, with over 300 H1N1-related hospitalizations.
Mark Salley, a spokesman for the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, said the H1N1 flu is widespread in Colorado.
“As of last Wednesday the deaths were at 14 and the number of hospitalized cases was somewhere over 600,” Salley said. “We continue to see more cases and we do expect to see more deaths.”
Colorado received 50,000 doses of H1N1 vaccine last week, according to a recent Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment press release.
This came as a blow to officials, who were expecting 183,300 doses, according to the press release.
“We have not received as many of the H1N1 vaccine as the federal government said we would receive,” Salley said. “The feds have just described it as delivery delays.”
Salley said additional vaccines will arrive each week.
CU Spokesman Bronson Hilliard said the number of flu cases on campus has been decreasing for about four weeks.
“We may have seen the peak of the first wave already,” Hilliard said. “We may be ahead of the state.”
Sandra Sonoda, a nurse at Wardenburg who does infection control, said she agreed the CU campus was moving faster than the rest of Colorado.
Sonoda said because many students spent the summer in other areas of the country and world that had high flu activity, these students carried the virus back to campus in August.
“Our spread would have been quite rapid because we’re in a situation where people are in congregate settings living situations, eating situations and classroom situations,” Sonoda said. “That was a peak that most colleges were also experiencing so we had a much quicker spread than other Colorado communities.”
Hilliard similarly said students had a high propensity of contracting the H1N1 flu elsewhere and bringing it back to Colorado, since many CU students spend their summers around the globe.
“The beginning of October there were a couple days where we didn’t have any flu cases at all,” Sonoda said. “There’s some indication that we may be beginning to see more patients again, and part of it is the weather. Since [Oct. 13] we definitely had a little bit of an uptick, but it’s nowhere like what we [were] seeing towards the beginning of September.”
Wardenburg saw their first confirmed cases of H1N1 on the first day of move-in, and numbers spiked in the middle of September, Sonoda said.
Wardenburg is expected to get large quantities of the vaccine at the end of October or the beginning of November, Hilliard said. However, Sonoda said these vaccines will only be given to high-risk individuals.
“Health care workers who have direct patient contact have priority for the vaccine,” Sonoda said.
Sonoda added that “pregnant women and people who have underlying conditions under 18 years of age” are also considered high-risk individuals.
Tegan Schaefer, a 20-year-old junior anthropology major, said she thinks the CU campus is out of sync with the rest of the state because CU is mostly made up of young people, a higher risk group for contracting the H1N1 flu.
“We’re at the highest age risk, so we got it first,” Schaefer said. “It’s kind of like chicken pox; once you have it, you don’t get it again.”
Eric Rasmussen, a 21-year-old junior ecology and evolutionary biology major, said he thought the number of reported H1N1 victims was simply wrong.
“I know people who got [the flu] but they never got it diagnosed,” Rasmussen said. “So they weren’t exactly sure if they had it.”
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Julie Ryan at Ryanja@colorado.edu.
