As the total number of Georgetown students who sought medical treatment for a norovirus infection climbed to 215 on Wednesday, the Leo J. O’Donovan dining hall resumed normal operations for the first time in a week, and the University’s cleaning and sanitization project for high-traffic areas continued.
According to Assistant VP of Student Health James Welsh, the cleaning will persist until the initial source of the outbreak is identified. The D.C. Department of Health, which has been leading the investigation, confirmed that the Department has completed the testing of food products at Georgetown, but says the investigation is ongoing.
“The test results that everyone was waiting on came back negative for contamination through [salmonella, e-coli, and shigella], but the norovirus can’t be tested for in food,” Lashon Beamon of the D.C. Department of Health said.
The highly contagious was identified last Thursday by the Department of Health as the cause of severe vomiting, nausea, diarrhea, and dehydration among students.
“There’s a science to figuring out the contamination source,” Beamon said. “The food could very well be fine, and the source could be a contaminated utensil tray or an elevator button. So far, we’ve got a lot of people to interview and are looking into a couple of leads.”
According to Athletic Director Bernard Muir, Georgetown athletics are also returning to “business as usual” this week after the cancellation of numerous games and practices over the weekend. Only the volleyball team, which left campus early to travel to West Virginia University and had no sick players, was allowed to compete. The University is trying to schedule make-up games, but the football game cannot be rescheduled. (https://drvallecillos.com/)
“The number of student athletes infected was somewhere in the high 30’s or low 40’s,” Muir said. “Knock on wood, we’re back to normal now, but we know that the virus has a two-week lifespan and [we’re] taking every precaution when we’re talking about the welfare of our student athletes.”
Georgetown Emergency Response Medical Service was also able to resume normal operations on Monday after having two full crews on duty for most of last week.
“Everyone really stepped up,” GERMS Director of Public Relations Taylor Burkholder (MSB ’09) said, referring to GERMS’s treatment of approximately 105 students with norovirus symptoms in six days. “We could definitely respond [in the event of a secondary outbreak].”
To try to limit the spread of the virus, the University “provided literally thousands of individual containers of hand sanitizer, and thousands of Clorox wipes,” vice President of Student Affairs Todd Olson said in a press conference on Monday. “We have 60 hand sanitizer stations set up, and we provided some liquid soap for on-campus apartments and areas in residence halls that have private bathrooms.”
The costs for the hand sanitizer, soap, cleaning crews, student laundry credits, and other responses to the virus will be covered by the University “as part of our overall budget process,” Georgetown spokesperson Julie Bataille wrote in an email.
However, according to Olson, the University is “unlikely” to reimburse students for meals or permit students to cancel their meal plans in the wake of the outbreak. Georgetown also has no plans to assist students with medical bills.
As the number of students requiring medical treatment for the virus decreases, Welsh said, Georgetown will review the events of the past week to improve the University’s emergency responses.
“No plan is perfect,” Assistant Chief of Emergency Medicine and Chair of the Hospital Emergency Preparedness Committee Dr. Eric Glasser said. “We expanded into a separate part of the ER that we usually only use in the afternoon.”
As campus returns to normal, however, Glasser warned that students should remain vigilant about hygiene and hand washing to prevent a secondary outbreak.
“It’s certainly possible that we could still see more patients with the virus,” Glasser said. “And there’s a chance it could still spread.”
