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Swine Flu Outbreak at Dartmouth

Hanover, New Hampshire - October 6, 2009

There is a suspected major outbreak of Swine Flu at Dartmouth College.

175 students have reported flu-like symptoms in the last two weeks, but not all of those cases have been confirmed as H1N1.

It's hard to say exactly how many students here have the swine flu. The first case was confirmed when classes started back up again about two weeks ago. Since only a dozen or so students have been tested for H1N1, but two-thirds of them have test positive.

Ben Ozterk's friend wasn't officially tested for the virus - but had a fever of 102.

"And we were kind of worried about him. He was wearing a mask for a day or two. Seeing friends get sick kind of worries me," said Ozterk.

I've heard a couple of frats with 5 or 6 cases of swine flu, but so far my frat has been pretty safe," said Nick Rolfes who is a junior at the Ivy League school.

Most of the 175 students with flu like symptoms haven't been tested, but of the dozen plus who have, two-thirds tested positive. Dartmouth College is a surveillance site for the New Hampshire Public Health Department, which means students with influenza like symptoms are chosen at random to be tested for H1N1.

I think it's significant but it's not unexpected. We've been anticipating that once we started classes two weeks ago we were going to start seeing many students that have influenza like illness," said Dartmouth College Health Officer Dr. Jack Turco.

The college sent letters to students today updating them on the status of the virus. Students with H1N1 are being advised to stay away from campus and to treat the virus like any other strain of flu. So far no students have been hospitalized and most are reporting only milk symptoms. No cause for panic as far as the college is concerned.

"This isn't normal influenza because it's much earlier than influenza, but we've been meeting steadily over the summer in anticipation of this and this is really what we expected," said Turco.

The college is prepared for the worst. There are no plans to shut down the college even if the H1N1 virus continues to spread, but many courses could be offered online to students who are ill.

Keagan Harsha - WCAX-TV