By Gillian Taylor | Staff Writer
With flu season underway, Dr. Sharon Stern, medical director at the Baylor Health Center, shared what students, faculty and staff should know about this semester’s outbreak.
According to Stern, flu season usually begins around October and lasts until February, with some variations throughout the years. However, she said cases have begun to strike the Baylor campus earlier than anticipated.
Stern said ever since the 2009 flu season — when the U.S. called a public health emergency for the H1N1 flu — the timing of a rise in cases has become more difficult to predict each year.
“We started seeing summer flus that were actual influenza, so everything has completely changed,” Stern said.
Although the Baylor Health Center is only seeing a small number of flu cases as of now, Stern said they expect an increase in numbers in November and the following couple months. She said it is important that everyone gets their flu vaccine before the expected wave of cases late fall, as the flu is rarely the same strain year to year.
“We get a new flu shot every year because as [the virus] travels the globe, it changes strains or the dominant strains,” Stern said.
Nancy Keating, director of nurses at the Baylor Health Center, said last year alone, they administered around 2,500 flu vaccines — a substantial increase from the previous years that averaged around 1,200 each season. Stern said she would love to match or exceed that number this year.
Niesha Nixon, administrative operations manager at the Baylor Health Center, said that in addition to the clinic on the second floor of the McLane Student Life Center, Baylor Health Services also has a mobile clinic. The mobile clinic allows them to reach more people outside of Baylor’s campus.
Keating said the staff at the Baylor Health Center will be taking the mobile clinic to Baylor’s Louise Herrington School of Nursing on Sept. 19 to vaccinate the students there.
Stern said Baylor Health Services is working diligently to serve the Baylor community throughout the flu season and encourages students, faculty and staff to receive their flu vaccine if they haven’t already done so.
