Tufts' University-Wide Task Force on Pandemic Planning has confirmed the first two cases of swine flu to hit the Tufts community.
The cases occurred about one week of each other. The patients, both of whom graduated on May 17, are recovering well at home.
Health Service sent in a testing sample to the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (DPH) last Tuesday after the first student was examined, according to Health Service's Medical Director Margaret Higham. Last Friday, DPH confirmed with Health Service that it was positive for the H1N1 strain of the influenza virus, commonly known as swine flu.
Three members of the task force, including Higham, Senior Director of Public Safety John King, who chairs the task force, and Executive Associate Dean at the Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine Joseph McManus, notified the Tufts community of the confirmation of the first case in an e-mail on Friday.
Click here to read the full e-mail message>>
On Wednesday, the task force updated its Web siteto reflect the most recent case, which was confirmed by DPH the same day.
Though Higham was not permitted to release any details on the patients, she told the Daily in an interview after the first case was confirmed that the individual's symptoms upon examination in Health Service were not severe.
"The student was mildly ill," she said.
In fact, Higham said, Health Service saw a large amount of flu-like illness on campus in late April, "right around the time that swine flu was first hitting us." Several testing samples were sent to the state and were reported negative for the H1N1 strain.
Over Commencement weekend, Higham said, the student was just one of several patients that Health Service examined for flu-like symptoms. The patients, including the student who tested positive for swine flu, all presented symptoms that were milder than those seen in April.
The findings are consistent with a general trend among most national cases of swine flu.
"To date, most H1N1 flu cases in the United States have been relatively mild," the e-mail said. "Symptoms have been very similar to those caused by the seasonal flu that we encounter every year."
Higham agreed that swine flu might not be as dangerous as commonly perceived.
"It's taken a while for the medical community to get information on what it is," she said. "At first, there was a lot of concern that it was more severe." Since then, there have been "so many cases that it's pretty apparent that it's like a regular winter flu and not terribly severe."
The task force, King told the Daily, was "not particularly surprised" to learn of the initial confirmation, given the rising numbers of reported cases around the state and nation.
The World Health Organization reported that swine flu has spread to 46 countries as of May 27, with over 6,760 cases confirmed in the United States. Ten of these cases resulted in deaths.
Massachusetts has confirmed 286 cases as of May 27, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). No deaths have been reported.
Somerville city officials confirmed the first case of swine flu within the city on May 5. The patient, an adult woman, is fully recovered.
Higham said that once the strain has shown up within a community, most health providers can assume that patients who have the flu in all likelihood are positive for the swine flu strain. As a result, state officials have asked medical providers to only send one or two tests to confirm that the virus has hit a community. Subsequent samples will only be sent if the patient is hospitalized.
"There are many more people who have it than show up on the statistics," Higham said. "It's spreading so rapidly. Even if there isn't a confirmed case, there's a reasonable chance that it would be swine flu."
There are no plans by the task force to bolster preventive measures in light of the confirmed cases.
In both the most recent e-mail and an initial e-mail sent to the Tufts community on April 28, before any cases were confirmed in Massachusetts, the task force offered suggestions on how to prevent exposure, especially noting the importance of isolation for individuals with fevers over 100 degrees.
Both King and Higham maintained that most of the task force's preventive measures were in place before the case was confirmed.
"We've increased the awareness…but most of the things that we would do in response or reaction I think were already in place," King said. "The fact that we had a confirmed case didn't have us getting into second gear because I think we were already there."
All activities are continuing as planned on Tufts' three campuses.
