LEWISTON —  The number of Bates College H1N1 flu cases has jumped from six confirmed to 115 suspected in less than a week, and four to five new cases were being reported every hour Tuesday.

Last Thursday, tests confirmed six students had H1N1, or swine flu. After three or more confirmed cases, the state stops testing for H1N1. All Bates students with flu-like symptoms — including high fever, coughing, headache, muscle aches and extreme fatigue — are now presumed to have the disease. 

But Christy Tisdale, Bates’ director of health services, believes most of the sick students do have H1N1. 

“We got pretty good at this. We know what it looks like,” she said. “Everybody pretty much has the same kind of symptoms.”

Sick students have been either quarantined on campus or sent home. If quarantined on campus, students have been asked to stay in isolated their dorm rooms or in college-owned housing. Students are told to go home as long as they live within 300 miles of the school, do not have to take public transportation to get there and do not risk spreading the disease to someone at home who is pregnant or who has a chronic health condition that could put them at risk for serious complications from H1N1.

The state sent Bates hundreds of H1N1 nasal spray vaccines in an effort to stop the disease. Nearly 640 students were vaccinated Saturday. But it can take seven to 10 days for the vaccine to provide full immunity and the flu was already spreading rapidly. 

By Monday, Tisdale said, so many sick students were waiting to be seen in the health center that they had to sit on the center’s floor. On Tuesday, the health center started triaging students over the phone, talking to them about their symptoms and telling those who seemed to have the flu to stay in quarantine.    

Tisdale believes the number of new cases peaked on Monday, but she said the health center was still identifying four or five cases an hour Tuesday afternoon.  

Of the students vaccinated Saturday, Tisdale estimated five or 10 came down with H1N1. She — and the Maine Center for Disease Control —  stressed that the nasal spray did not give those people flu. Those students were likely already exposed to the flu when they got vaccinated against it and the vaccine didn’t have time to make them fully immune.

“They would have had it (H1N1) anyway at the same exact time,” Tisdale said. “They might have a little bit of immunity. It might even be a milder case because they’ve had the vaccine.” 

Bates is so far one of the few local colleges to experience a mass flu outbreak. There have been no H1N1 cases at Colby College in Waterville, the University of Maine at Farmington or the University of Southern Maine.

The University of Maine in Orono has seen 22 suspected cases since the beginning of the school year. However, no patients have been tested by the college because, a spokesman said, testing isn’t required and most university students and employees see their own doctors. Of the 22, nine were employees.   

Bowdoin College in Brunswick confirmed eight cases of H1N1 and then, like Bates, began classifying all flu-like illnesses as H1N1. Since the beginning of the school year, 185 people have
come down with the flu. Only four have become sick so recently that they remain
either at home or in quarantine on campus.

All colleges require sick students to stay in quarantine on campus or go home.

Despite those precautions — and the scheduled vaccination of about another 400 people on Thursday — Tisdale expects the number of flu cases to rise at Bates. She said the CDC believes that 30 percent of a population is likely to come down with the flu. For Bates, which has about 1,750 students, that would be over 500 people, not including faculty.

But there is some potential relief: The college will have a regularly-scheduled break next week. From Wednesday to Sunday, the campus will be cleared of people and the virus won’t be able to spread.

“It can’t come soon enough,” Tisdale said.  

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 For more information about H1N1, also known as swine flu, visit www.maineflu.gov. The site is updated several times daily. A toll-free hotline is also being staffed by the Maine CDC. Those interested may call 1-888-257-0990 during the week if they have questions about H1N1 or the vaccine.

 For more information about Bates College and its plans to deal with H1N1, visit www.bates.edu/x214224.xml. If you plan to attend an event on campus and want to know if it could be canceled because of the flu outbreak, call 786-6255.