UPDATED: Feb. 6, 2018 at 11:18 p.m.

A mumps outbreak last semester at Syracuse University has helped the college prepare a sanitation strategy as a flu outbreak hits central New York particularly hard.

New flu cases in central New York more than doubled in the week that ended on Jan. 27, according to a report from the New York State Department of Health.

“While mumps is completely different from flu, the blessing in disguise, I guess, is that we’ve been following the same diligent precautions for spread of disease,” said Ben Domingo, director of SU Health Services.

In some cases, Domingo said, health services referred students with chest infections and other complications resulting from the flu to local hospitals.

SU has not experienced any cases of meningitis, a brain infection or deaths due to the flu, Domingo said. Early last week, Domingo said he saw a lot of flu treatment occurring at health services, before the number of patients experiencing flu symptoms slowed down later in the week.

Influenza B is more prevalent on campus currently, but health services has also detected the unstable H3N2 virus, Domingo said.

Widespread flu outbreaks have affected every state in the United States in some capacity, according to reports from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Excluding Oregon, every state in the continental U.S. is experiencing widespread influenza activity.

This year there has been more flu hospitalizations than in recent years, the CDC reported.

The flu vaccine this year — which is estimated to decrease infection likelihood only 10 to 33 percent — and the emergence of the challenging H3N2 strain resulted in a massive uptick in flu cases, said Emily Martin, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Michigan School of Public Health.

All 62 counties in New York have reported widespread flu activity, or more than 10 cases per 100,000 people, according to the New York State Department of Health.

“It’s an extraordinarily genetically diverse virus,” Martin said of the H3N2 virus. “It makes it challenging to predict what’s going to happen with H3N2 well enough to get the right virus into the vaccine.”

This year’s flu isn’t more dangerous, Martin said, but the number of infections creates more pressure on health care systems, which can cause more flu-related deaths.

Fifty-three children have died in the U.S. as of Feb. 2 of the flu, according to the CDC.

“All the states are … having widespread activity at the same time … usually each state sort of goes through their own evolution of their cases increasing and then peaking and coming back down in a variety of patterns,” Martin said. “This year they’re all at their peak level at the same time. We don’t know why.”

In response to the outbreak, health services has added two evening health providers and two additional providers on Saturdays. SU has also offered a quadrivalent vaccine that targets four flu strains.

There’s no way of knowing when flu season will peak, but strains often hit in consecutive waves, Martin said.

“I haven’t seen any slowing yet,” she added.

Further complicating the impact at SU, some students are from countries that aren’t accustomed to widespread flu or don’t request flu shots.

Paula Chirinos, a sophomore who contracted flu in November, never got a vaccine and said she mistook the disease for a cold because flu is not widespread in her home country of Peru.

Sophomore Quinlan Hooker, from Dubai, said flu vaccines are available there, but he never got one. He never contracted flu before and missed the entire second week of classes with a fever just over 102 degrees Fahrenheit, he said.

“I’d have 10 blankets on me and still be cold,” Hooker said. “Then I’d just pass out from exhaustion and then wake up, and two hours later, I’d be drenched in sweat and take a shower. It was a whole cycle full of discomfort.”

Published on February 6, 2018 at 10:01 pm

Contact Bobby: rpmannin@syr.edu