By By Maggie Cassidy, News Staff
Two students who had previously been tested for mumps were confirmed to have the virus earlier this week, university officials said.
Vice President for Marketing and Communications Mike Armini said 10 students have been tested for the virus so far. That number has not increased since Tuesday.
‘Some of our fears about a much larger outbreak have not come to fruition,’ Armini said today.
The Northeastern community was originally notified of the potential outbreak April 16, when a campus-wide e-mail and text message alerts were sent to notify community members that four students were being tested for suspected cases of the mumps.
Armini said that there is no clear relationship among the 10 students tested, adding that some of the 10 students knew each other, while others didn’t.
‘Our assessment is that it’s not like they’re all from one group, or they all went on one trip together,’ he said earlier this week, although he added today that the first two students with suspected cases had recently returned from Europe, where there has been a mumps outbreak.
Armini said he was not sure when each of the two students with confirmed cases was tested, or whether these two students had a connection to each other.
Students with confirmed cases of the mumps are given the same treatment as those with suspected cases, Armini said, which includes isolation. Recovery time is a few days, he said.
Before attending Northeastern, most students are required to receive an MMR vaccination, which protects against measles, mumps and rubella and is typically given as a series of shots when people are 1 and 2 years old, Armini said. But while Armini said each of the 10 students tested had received the MMR vaccination prior to attending Northeastern, the shots are only about 80 percent effective.
‘People still can get [the mumps] after they’ve had the shot,’ he said.
Less than 1 percent of the student population has not received the MMR vaccination because of religious reasons, Armini said. In response to the outbreak, Armini said these students were contacted and encouraged to receive the vaccination.
According to the mumps fact sheet on the University Health & Counseling Services website, symptoms of mumps include swelling of the cheeks and jaw, fever, headache, stiff neck and loss of appetite.
