February is the peak month of flu season, according to the Centers for Disease Control, with students and faculty on campus feeling the effects. Since 1983, February has been ranked the peak month for 17 seasons, followed by a peak of illness in December for seven seasons and January for six seasons.
For most college students, weeks three to five of being back on campus fall within these peak months.
Kat Marriott, the director of operations at the Ohio University’s Heritage College of Osteopathic Medicine’s Infectious and Tropical Disease Institute, said many college students get sick during this time. Marriott said this is due to being put into an environment with all kinds of new infectious diseases.
“It's kind of like the kindergarten syndrome,” Marriott said. “You're coming from an environment where there's a relatively few number of people, your immediate family, your immediate friends, and you're thrust into an environment where you are closely interacting with a lot more people, most of them strangers.”
As of Feb. 6, Ohio has had 6,877 influenza, also commonly known as the flu, cases reported from clinics participating in the National Respiratory and Enteric Virus Surveillance System to the Ohio Health Department. Of these cases, 396 cases from the Southeastern region of Ohio and 16 cases from Athens County resulted in hospitalizations. The CDC reported 236,204 positive cases have been recorded across the country.
According to the Cleveland Clinic, the most common strains in the winter are influenza A and B, which can be further broken into subtypes. For influenza A, reports of the strains The CDC says (H1N1)pdm09, H3N2 and H5 have been tested this flu season. In addition, Victoria lineage for influenza B has been reported.
For COVID-19, the Ohio Department of Health reported for the week of Jan. 30 to Feb. 6 a total of 5,136 cases for Ohio, with 218 of the cases resulting in hospitalizations and 24 cases resulting in death. For the entirety of this flu season, 72,600 cases of COVID-19 were reported in Ohio, with 499 of them coming from Athens County.
As of Jan. 25, the largest COVID-19 variant of concern is, according to ODH, the XEC variant, with 47.44% of total cases. The KP.3.1.1 and MC.1 strains are also of concern, with 23.21% and 14.33%, respectively.
According to Marriott, the spread of these diseases is through the disbursement of them into the air, which includes sneezing and coughing. Another way is through direct contact. Marriott said people sneeze into their hands and wipe it onto stuff all the time unknowingly.
“Your hands are some of your dirtiest parts of the body,” Marriott said. “When you shake somebody's hand or you know you hug them closely, people do not realize how significant just general hygiene, such as washing your hands, frequently using hand sanitizer, can prevent spreading just generic influenza and sometimes COVID.”
Marriott said students can also sneeze into tissues and wear a mask to help minimize the spread to those around them, but most importantly, sick students should stay in their dorms or apartments.
“The vast majority of our classes now, thankfully, have offered an option to do work remotely or virtually, and we have things like DoorDash to bring food to you instead of going to the cafeteria,” Marriott said. “Don't go to your 100-level biology class where there are 350 students. You can get the notes from your best friend in the class, stay home.”
Students should make sure they stick to a balanced diet with healthy foods. Marriott said she understands students have freedom, but they should still include fruits and vegetables in their diets and eat at regular meal times to help promote immunity.
“When we send our kids off to college, they tend to forget about how important the basic food pyramid is,” Marriott said. ”Eating pizza and drinking soda or alcohol three times a day, that's not a great, not a great diet.”
Zachary Tessean, a freshman studying exercise physiology, was sick with the flu and sinus infection the previous week. Tessean said the illnesses affected his classes and social life.
“I can't connect with them every day because I don't want them to get sick, and I just don't feel like I physically am (well) enough to talk to them,” Tessean said. “I'm just laying there practically dead.”
Tessean said he tried to quarantine himself while sick but could not completely. He still went to Jefferson Market to get food. In addition, Tessean could not completely avoid his roommate because they had their desks next to each other. They both had to sanitize their items and keep them separate.
It was also tough for Tessean not to go to class. According to Tessean, while sick, it was a daily internal battle to decide if he should go or not because at times he felt better.
“I know (some) classes you just can't miss sometimes,” Tessean said. “Focus on your important classes and let the less important ones kind of trickle down, and you can always catch up on that later.”
According to Marriott, the most important thing a student can do to protect themselves against different illnesses is to get vaccinated.
“This flu season right now is turning out to be particularly bad,” Marriott said. “The strains that are circulating around are a bit more potent, and that vaccinations are really, really critical. They are critical to protect yourself, and they're really critical for generating herd immunity. The more people in a crowd that are vaccinated and present, that's one less human that the virus can infect.”
Marriott said the numbers for the flu are currently skyrocketing, and it is not too late to get vaccinated.
“It’s not too late to get a vaccine,” Marriott said. “It will help protect you. It will help protect your friends. It'll help protect your boyfriend, your girlfriend, your partner, your dorm mate or your housemate.”
