The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports Louisiana is experiencing a high number of flu cases, but Loyola students seem to be staying relatively healthy.
Alicia Bourque, director of student health services, said that her staff hasn’t seen any sharp increase in flu cases this year in comparison to years passed.
“We don’t have an outbreak,” she said. “We’ve been tracking numbers, and we haven’t really seen an increase so we’re just treating the students that are coming in with flu like symptoms.”
Bourque added that Student Health Services is treating students with flu like symptoms with fever reducers and is giving out care packages that include things like soup, crackers and Tylenol.
Loyola will not be able to help out with flu shots, as the university depleted its supply late last week.
We ran out last Friday, so on our website and on the Loyola homepage, we have a list of nearby pharmacies that still have them in stock,” she said.
Bourque said that part of the reason for the increased number of flu shots requested by Loyola’s students, faculty and staff was the relatively high number of flu cases nationwide and statewide.
According to the CDC, through the first week of January 32.8 percent of patients who got tested for a strand of influenza in Louisiana were diagnosed with the illness.
Knowing the high number of flu cases in the state, psychology pre-med sophomore Shravya Sanagala said she went elsewhere when she found out Loyola had run out of flu shots.
Sanagala waited for a nearby Walgreens to get its next shipment of flu shots in stock but said she wasn’t too concerned by the high number of flu cases reported this winter.
“I just get it every year,” she said. “I think my parents were a little more worried than I was, but I know it’s going to be bad, so I guess it was a little more incentive to go get it.”
Sanagala added that no one that she knows of on her floor in Buddig Hall has caught the flu and that she has only seen a few students affected by it on campus.
Hasani Grayson can be reached at [email protected]
