Universities braced for freshers' week swine flu outbreak

Edinburgh, Herriot-Watt, Napier and Queen Margaret universities have all drawn up contingency plans ready to deal with a potential outbreak of the influenza amongst their students and staff during freshers' week.

An Edinburgh Napier spokesperson said: "The university has comprehensive processes and procedures in place for pandemic flu and there is a response team which meets on a regular basis to review and monitor the situation."

Fears have been raised of a renewed outbreak of swine flu as students at schools and universities across the western world return to class for the new term.

In an attempt to decrease the chances of the virus being transmitted through contact with hard surfaces, such as computer keyboards, QMU has installed hand gel dispensers across all campuses and will issue each student with personal hand gels at the start of the session.

Through their contingency plan, the University of Edinburgh has also said that they will "endeavour to continue to operate throughout a pandemic”, mostly through preventive and informative measures such as handing out facemasks and ensuring people know what to do if they fall ill.

A university spokesperson added that at present there are no plans to cancel any events during fresher's week, but that these plans are fluid and may therefore change according to circumstances.

Dr Peter Palese, chairman of the department of microbiology at the Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, told The Journal that the swine flu virus is indeed highly infectious, but the threat is not as bad as it seems.

Dr Palese was in the city giving a series of talks to medical students at the University of Edinburgh. Referring to previous pandemics such as the Spanish, Asian and Hong Kong Flu, He explained that this particular virus lacks an important protein, making it less lethal to humans.

"I believe that the novel H1N1 swine virus is just another (fourth) seasonal influenza virus strain. Regular/seasonal influenza is a serious disease but this swine strain is not a 1918/1957/1968- like pandemic strain.”

Writing in the Wall Street Journal earlier this summer Dr Palese wrote that "based on history and what we know about the flu virus, the threat is not as bad as it may seem".

"Since people have been exposed the H1N1 viruses over many decades, we likely have some cross-reactive immunity against the swine virus.

"While it may not be sufficient to prevent illness, it may very well dampen the impact of the virus on mortality."

Prof Steve Field, chairman of the Royal College of Practitioners, also agreed that whilst it is sensible to plan ahead for an outbreak , fresher’s week events should be safe from any changes or cancellations.

"There wouldn’t be any case for cancelling fresher’s weeks anywhere. Large groups mixing together isn’t unsafe and freshers’ weeks are an important induction into university life."