Swine flu-related illness hits Morningside Heights

The swine flu that first hit New York City with a few isolated cases in Queens has now spread to Morningside Heights.

Teachers College sent a message to the school’s students on Tuesday reporting that a student “was diagnosed this past Sunday with Type A Influenza, which has been linked to swine flu. We have been and will continue to be in touch with the student.”

The student responded to the school’s e-mail advisory about the illness late Monday afternoon, after having been on campus Thursday through Saturday. The e-mail stated that he was in Zankel Hall, the first floor of the TC library, and that he used computer labs on the third floor of Macy Hall and on the second floor of Horace Mann Hall. TC promptly reported the case to the city’s Department of Health, according to the e-mail.

The school said it did not sanitize the areas where the infected student had been prior to his diagnosis. “As we were notified 2 days after the student was on campus, sanitizing the facilities would have extremely low health utility and would be unnecessarily disruptive to our students during this busy time of the year,” TC’s message explained.

Six neighborhood students with fevers are also being tested for the flu. The students attend Ascension School at 220 W. 108th St., between Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue. The Department of Health did not have any information about these potential cases, and will not be finding out the results of the swine flu tests until at least Wednesday. The department had no information about how long such tests typically take to process.

Earlier on Tuesday, the Health Department released a statement that “four days of close monitoring has yet to show any increase in reports of severe respiratory illness in New York City.”
The statement added, “The Health Department is closely monitoring health trends in New York City for evidence of a wider outbreak. Agency officials are also speaking regularly with all hospitals in New York City, and the agency’s syndromic surveillance system is monitoring numerous indicators, such as hospital admissions and emergency department visits, for increases flu-like illness. Moderate increases were observed over the weekend, but their significance is unknown.”

Earlier this week, the University posted on its Web site a health advisory message from Samuel Seward, M.D., assistant vice president of Health Services, to University students with precautionary information about the swine flu. Safeguarding measures include frequent washing of hands and face, use of tissues to contain sneezing, avoiding contact with things that are often touched, such as doorknobs, getting the influenza vaccine annually, and, of course, avoiding contact with those who are ill.

Executive Vice President for Student Administrative Services Jeffrey Scott sent a similar message to faculty and staff on Monday. Scott noted that “currently, there are no changes to University operations or activities based on these public health recommendations.” He also noted that the Center for Disease Control has urged people to avoid “non-essential travel” to Mexico, where the swine flu first broke out.

At Sunday evening’s Columbia College Student Council meeting, Vice President of Student Auxiliary Services Scott Wright addressed students about his division’s work, but also came with handouts from the Department of Health about swine flu, and warned the council to be aware of potential contagion. He said that Columbia had a supply of Tamiflu, though he did not know how effective it would be against swine flu.

The swine flu is a respiratory infection that is typically rare in humans. The recent pandemic began with severe cases in Mexico. Most human cases involve direct interaction with pigs, according to the city’s Health Department. When the illness afflicts people, symptoms can often be mistaken as coming from seasonal allergies. People with the flu have experienced and include fever, cough, sore throat, body aches, headache, chills, and fatigue, and in some cases, diarrhea and vomiting. See http://www.columbia.edu/cu/studentservices/preparedness/ for more information on swine flu prevention.

This information comes from the Pandemic Preparedness Working Group, a unit that Columbia instituted in fall 2006 with “the charge of developing a pandemic response plan,” according to an earlier message from Seward posted on the group’s Web page. “The historical record suggests that an influenza pandemic may occur in our time. During the twentieth century, three such global outbreaks (in 1918-1919, 1957 and 1968) caused millions of deaths and extensive illness. While neither the timing nor the degree of severity of any future epidemic is predictable, it is important that we be prepared.”