Kathleen McDonough
Interim News Editor

An e-mail sent out to students on Monday from Dean of Students Melinda Stoops warned of a recent outbreak of the gastrointestinal disease norovirus.

Hofrenning said the Health Center has seen “between 15 and 18” cases of GI viruses this month that could potentially be norovirus. This is about 10 percent of all students seen by health services, “so it’s a little bit of an increase.”

Although Hofrenning said she would not call this an outbreak on campus, she said “the emergency rooms in Boston and the MetroWest have seen an increase in the number of GI illnesses” also, and that the virus most likely came to campus from the surrounding communities because it is so contagious.

The e-mail said that the Health Center on campus has “seen an increase in the number of students with these [norovirus] symptoms” such as nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and abdominal pain that last one to two days. The norovirus can be spread by contact with an infected person or contaminated food.

Director of Health Services Ilene Hofrenning said that it is hard to distinguish between norovirus, specifically, and other gastrointestinal (GI) diseases because they are similar in symptoms, but that norovirus is usually much more intense and short-lived. The only way to know for sure if a person has norovirus, as opposed to another GI virus, is to send out a stool sample to a lab to be tested.

The Health Center does not test ill students for norovirus “because by the time you get the results, people are over it already and it’s a little bit tricky to test for it and it’s expensive. … The only people that tend to get tested are people that work with food,” said Hofrenning.

According to a Massachusetts Department of Public Health norovirus fact sheet, “In NLV outbreaks at food-related businesses, food handling employees will be required to provide stool specimens for testing.”

Director of Dining Services Ralph Eddy said, “To our knowledge, none of our employees have been diagnosed with norovirus.  Any employee with symptoms will not be permitted to work until they obtain proper medical clearance.” He added that the increase in norovirus incidents gave Health Services “an opportunity to reinforce with our teams why their extensive safety training, coupled with washing their hands and wearing gloves during food preparation and service, is so important.”

Linda Campbell, the vice president of quality and patient services for the MetroWest Medical Centers, said their hospitals have “absolutely seen an increase” in norovirus cases this winter season. “We’ve seen about five in-patients a day for the past month in the Framingham Union Campus.” She added that lab tests are not used on a routine basis because they are hard to determine, so they diagnos based on symptoms.

No students have been hospitalized because of a GI illness so far.

The school is focusing on making students aware of the illness right now, said Hofrenning, because “the most important thing in preventing the spread is personal hygiene,” such as washing hands frequently, not sharing food and drinks and not going to class when sick, as Stoops listed in her e-mail.

Hofrenning said that although she expects there to be “a few more cases,” she hopes there will be fewer due to people being diligent about prevention techniques.

Tom Lustig, a senior English major, said he believes he had the norovirus recently because he experienced intense stomach pains and “threw up every half hour, which wasn’t very fun.” He experienced these symptoms for about 16 hours and was absent from school one day, but didn’t go to Health Services.

Rachellyn Makuch, a sophmore English major, had similar symptoms that lasted 24 hours. “I felt a little dizzy and was throwing up most of the night. I didn’t go to health services because it was closed when I started to feel really sick.”

Although gastrointestinal diseases have increased this year, Hofrenning said she received some positive news about a decrease in cases of the flu this winter from the Department of Public Health in an e-mail. “Usually in February, they’re inundated with flu, but there’s been very little in Massachusetts.”