With the winter months approaching, the University Health Center hopes to prepare students for the upcoming flu season.
Univeristy Health Services is offering flu shots to U. students and faculty starting this week until their vaccine supply runs out.
Shots will be administered from 8-11:15 and 1:30-3 on Mondays, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays. On Thursday they will be administered from 9:20-11:15 and 1:30-3. The shots cost $9 for students and $15 for faculty. The fee is bursarable. The flu shots will also be administered at the Firelands campus.
The influenza virus spreads from the nose and throat of infected persons. The major symptoms of the flu are a high fever, dry cough, and sore eyes and back. The symptoms tend to last for only a few days. Some cases, though, cause hospitalization.
Thousands of deaths a year are a result of influenza, but this tend to occur in cases of elderly people with influenza.
The Health Center believes that there vaccine supply should last throughout the flu season. They will be able to administer about 1,440 shots. In the past the Health Center administers about 1,500 vaccines.
The best time to receive a flu shot is during the months of October or November. It generally takes two weeks before the vaccine protection develops. The flu season tends to peak between January and March. On the average, Bowling Green’s flu season comes later in the year.
“The Center for Disease Control said that it looks to be a bad flu season because we had two mild years,” registered nurse Glenna Rufo said.
The CDC makes a prediction on the year by analyzing where the flu was and how it spread in other parts of the world in the past few years.
It is recommended that people with long term health problems should receive the vaccine. The Health Center encourages that students who live in the dorms should get the vaccine. Rufo feels that all students should receive that vaccine as a preventative measure.
“Students live in such close contact and everybody is always coughing and sneezing on each other,” Rufo said. “That is the way that the flu is spread.”
Rufo also notes that drinking and smoking drops a persons immunity making them more seceptable to catching the flu. The vaccine consists of three killed strains of different varieties of influenza. The vaccine contains New Caledonia, Panama, and Hong Kong versions of the flu. The vaccine builds an immunity against these forms of the flu in order to try to prevent catching the flu.
Some side effects of the vaccine include a sore arm, fever, or aches. If symptoms occur they only last about between 1 and 2 days.
