Battling an increase in cases of the swine flu among students, university officials have begun secluding ill campus residents in empty rooms across campus and forcing them to wear masks.
Isolation in single rooms has become the preferred method for health officials dealing with students reporting fevers and other influenza-like symptoms, although Tufts has only used the technique a handful of times. Health Service encourages students to travel home and stay with family until influenza-like symptoms subside, but when home is too far away, approximately 50 vacant on-campus singles provide recourse.
The university prohibits students in isolation from attending classes, and they must wear a mask when leaving their rooms for essential purposes. Any visitors to sequestered students' rooms must wear masks or stay at least six feet away from infected students.
In Wren Hall, a few sick students have been isolated in informally titled "closet singles," small rooms set aside in the dorm, which is mainly made up of 10-person suites for sophomores.
"They don't even have closets in the closet singles," said Margaret Belchic, a sophomore. She lived in one of these small rooms for two-and-a-half days last week after she went to Health Service with flu-like symptoms.
After examining Belchic at Health Service on Sept. 21, a doctor told her that she would have to go home or go into isolation. The sophomore praised Health Service officials, who she said handled her case well and called her every day to check on her condition. But Belchic said that a feeling of being deeply alone combined with a lack of clear information made the experience distressing.
"I felt like I was kind of dumped," she said, explaining that her roommates received no word on where she was, her illness or steps they should take. But she added that none of her friends have since fallen ill.
Health Service reported 38 cases of students with influenza-like symptoms between Sept. 7 and Sept. 27, with nearly half of those cases surfacing last week, according to Director of Health Service Margaret Higham.
Only a few students have moved to special isolation housing so far. Most students with flu-like symptoms either live off campus or in on-campus singles, or have elected to return home.
"We are strongly encouraging people to go home if they live anywhere in the greater New England area," Higham said. "We'd really prefer people go home."
The university requires students to stay secluded for at least 24 hours after their fevers subside without the use of fever-reducing medicine. For most people, isolation lasts from four to five days. One student who was put in isolation this month told the Daily that Health Service did not originally make the 24-hour rule clear to her.
Freshman Virginia Bledsoe said she entered isolation on Sept. 21, but only had a fever for that first day. She said Health Service officials gave her conflicting information over the next few days about how long she would have to stay secluded, even once she had made clear that her fever had gone away.
A nurse eventually called her three days into her period of isolation. "She said, ‘Well, why are you still there? You should have left two days ago,'" Bledsoe said.
While students are not generally tested for it, public health officials have determined that the influenza virus currently infecting people is most likely H1N1, or swine flu, according to Higham. Common symptoms include fever, coughing, sore throat, body ache and headache. Higham said the virus is spread by close contact.
A "large percentage" of students who have come to Health Service recently, though, have had temperatures of less than 100 degrees Fahrenheit, the cutoff currently used for diagnoses. Residential staff and other university officials have been passing out thermometer strips that people can apply to their foreheads to roughly determine their temperature.
The isolated-housing policy, which was instituted after administrative meetings over the summer, only applies to students living in on-campus dorms with at least one roommate; students in singles need not self-isolate. The university encourages ill students living off campus to return home if possible or to isolate themselves in single rooms in off-campus housing.
"Since students who live in a single will be returning to their single, every dorm is an isolation dorm." Higham said.
A lack of extra housing limits the university's ability to fully remove infected students from dorms. Some colleges around the nation have demarcated particular dorms entirely to house students with influenza-like conditions, while others have required healthy roommates of ill residents to move out temporarily.
When rooms in Wren were first turned into isolation housing this month, residential staff put up signs on the doors of nearby bathrooms labeling them as "sick bathrooms," and signs on others marking "healthy bathrooms."
A lack of clear communication left some residents confused. Some found themselves having to leave their suites to use the bathroom or saw an influx of people using their own facilities, some residents said this week.
Director of Residential Life and Learning (ResLife) Yolanda King held a meeting on Sunday for Wren residents at which she clarified isolation-housing policy and listened to concerns. She said yesterday that residential assistants may not have originally conveyed all information in a timely manner.
ResLife is "working out the kinks as we're going along," King said.
The office has decided after hearing feedback from students that henceforth only students already living in Wren will move into the dorm's "closet singles" for isolation, King said.
King did not know of any other time isolation of ill students has been used at Tufts in the past. She said that administrators might consider additional precautions if they become necessary. She suggested that ResLife could require healthy students to isolate themselves from their sick roommates, if the rising number of H1N1 cases creates such a need.
"This is, I think, a first for not only Tufts, but I think for many institutions, in terms of the flu season that we're about to enter," King said, referring to the decision to separate ill students in singles.
The university has attempted to ease sequestered students' situations by allowing those students' friends to pick up meals for them from Dining Services, which will also deliver food to the students' rooms if requested.
Belchic, the sophomore in Wren, advised sick students to get checked out by Health Service officials and to isolate themselves if necessary. She said, though, that fear of being removed from friends and day-to-day activities might be discouraging some people from doing so.
"Now some of my friends who have symptoms won't go to Health Services," said Belchic, who has recovered from the flu. "They're just afraid of having to miss four days of classes for a cold."
