Since last week, about 200 students at USC have fallen ill with a gastrointestinal virus, USC officials said.
Meanwhile, UCLA officials are encouraging Bruins to wash their hands and not to share food and drink though no Bruins have yet been affected.
“We’ve not IDed any students at the Ashe Center that have the illness,” said Nancy Holt, an associate physician and medical director of the Arthur Ashe Student Health and Wellness Center.
Sick students began exhibiting signs of a stomach flu Friday night at USC, said James Grant, a USC spokesman.
He said it began with about 130 reports in the first day, and 70 more students fell ill in the next 24 hours.
“We know for sure that this is not a food-borne issue,” Grant said.
“We highly suspect that it is called a norovirus, but we won’t be able to prove that for a couple of weeks,” said Grant.
Cultures have been taken to a lab, and the Los Angeles County Department of Health is to confirm the diagnosis in the next few weeks, he added.
If the norovirus is the culprit, it usually takes one to two days to recuperate, and symptoms include vomiting, diarrhea and stomach cramps, according to the USC Web site.
“I am told that the norovirus pretty much has popped around America at one school or another,” Grant said.
“Like anything, there’s a virus that’s out there and if somebody gets sick and then doesn’t know that, and comes into contact with other people then that is going to create an issue.”
Grant referred to an outbreak attended to at Georgetown University last week.
Georgetown Emergency Medical Services treated more than 175 norovirus-related cases last week, according to the Georgetown Web site.
As of Monday, 212 Georgetown students were reported to have sought out treatment for the virus, according to a Georgetown statement.
The District of Columbia Department of Health’s results indicate that the norovirus is, indeed, to blame for the outbreak.
Georgetown University officials could not be reached.
But students can never be too careful, and they should take as many precautions as careful to avoid a similar outbreak in Westwood.
“In the meantime, we’ve asked our students, faculty and staff to take extra hygiene precautions and wash their hands frequently,” Grant said.
“This is a virus usually transmitted by touch, food, even in some cases a workstation or computer mouse. We’re asking everyone to take extra precautions.”
College students are especially at risk for outbreaks like this because of the close proximity to other students.
Outbreaks of the norovirus were confirmed in 2008 at Oregon State University, the University of Connecticut, the University of Denver and Villanova University, according to
insidehighered.com, a higher education news Web site.
Grant added that USC officials are hopeful the number of affected students will not begin to increase.
“We’re hopeful that the number of new reports will continue to drop, but we’ll have to wait and see,” Grant
said.