Winter flu levels have been higher than usual in Hanover so far this year, town manager Julia Griffin said. This is possibly due to the fact that this year’s influenza vaccine may not be as adept at preventing the flu as it has been in previous years.
Dick’s House co-director Jack Turco said there have not been many reports of the flu yet this winter. The flu, along with upper respiratory infections, is the most common sickness on campus in the winter. Turco pointed out that while only a minority of “flu” cases are actually true influenza, it is pointless to differentiate between similar sicknesses since there is not a specific treatment for any of them.
While the College has not yet seen many flu cases, Turco said this is early in the year and students have only just returned from break.
In order to encourage vaccinations each year, Turco said Dick’s House “publicizes like crazy” and offers free flu clinics for both students and employees. Approximately 1,000 students and 1,000 employees are vaccinated each year at Dick’s House, in addition to students who receive flu shots from CVS or in their hometowns, and employees who are vaccinated by their primary physicians or at the Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center.
Turco said that despite Dick’s House’s push for flu shots over the past five years, he believes that approximately the same number of students and employees receive flu shots each year because “people are in their habits” and “it’s hard to convince someone who doesn’t want to get one.”
Hanover CVS pharmacist Karl Mussgnug, however, said he thinks there has been an increase in students getting vaccinated at CVS this year. In general, he believes that CVS has vaccinated about 1,000 people this year, including 250-350 Dartmouth students, he said.
Mussnug believes there could be three potential reasons for an increase in student vaccinations this year. In the past few years the CVS has increased its advertising, and this past year CVS acquired Eastman pharmacy, merging all customers of the two stores.
Mussgnug also speculated that the increase in vaccinations at CVS could have been due to issues at Dick’s House, citing that he believed they had fewer scheduled appointment days or suggested that they may have underestimated the number of students who would want a flu shot.
“For any number of those reasons, it seems like there was definitely an increase in the number of students coming in for vaccinations at CVS.”
New Hampshire Department of Public Health epidemiologist Benjamin Chan said that the flu vaccine does not appear to be as effective this year as in years past. The vaccines that are used either contain three or four different strains of flu viruses, including both influenza A and B strains, Chan said. The main circulating flu this year is H3N2, a type of influenza A, which is included in the vaccine.
Over time, however, flu viruses can genetically drift. H3N2 has undergone changes so that it is no longer an exact match to the vaccine. Even though the vaccine contains H3N2, more than two-thirds of the viruses causing infection are slightly different than the vaccine strain, infections this year might be more severe, Chan said.
He also stressed, however, that getting a flu shot is “still one of the best lines of defense” against the flu.
Hanover town manager Julia Griffin said that within the town of Hanover, influenza cases have been higher than usual for this point in the season.
Griffin reiterated Chan’s explanation of the less effective vaccine when discussing influenza’s rise in New Hampshire this year, and said that the severity has been pretty high, especially in young children.
“The virus is impacting preschoolers, so we’re pushing this year to get everyone right down to infants vaccinated,” Griffin said.
New Hampshire tracks flu data by looking at flu activity in the state as a whole using different surveillance systems around the state. Health care providers report weekly the number of patients with a flu-like illness. Currently, flu numbers are not unusually high, Chan said.
Because of the less effective vaccine, however, “there is potential for it to be a more serious flu season,” he said. “We won’t know how it compares until we get further into season.”
Turco agrees with Chan on the possibility of a more severe outbreak. Even though the amount of students who received flu shots this year was about the same as usual, since this year’s flu shot is not a perfect match, it is possible that the strain of influenza coming through New Hampshire will not be prevented by the vaccination, Turco said.
Turco would like to avoid this type of outbreak as much as possible.
“If we have a big outbreak, it can really disrupt whole flow of campus,” Turco said. “We want to do everything we can to prevent from spreading the virus, especially when the vaccine is not as effective.”
Both Turco and Chan mentioned washing hands, sneezing and coughing with good form and treating cases of the flu with medication as ways to prevent an epidemic.
