As of Thursday evening, the number of cases of "walking pneumonia" on campus had risen to 33 diagnoses since mid-September, up from 25 last week.
Currently, 12 of these cases are active.
In a Maine Public Health Alert Network System advisory, Dr. Dora Anne Mills, the state's public health director, described the situation at Bowdoin as an "outbreak of atypical pneumonia." It is called atypical because of the difficulty of definitively diagnosing the illness in laboratory tests.
The outbreak of walking pneumonia has attracted the attention of local news agencies. On Thursday afternoon, a news crew from Portland-based WMTW Channel 8 was on campus to report on the situation.
State health officials have been working with the College since mid-September to deal with the outbreak. According to Geoff Beckett, an assistant state epidemiologist with the Maine Center for Disease Control (CDC), the purpose of the investigation is "to figure out the best ways to intervene" in terms of prevention and treatment.
From a research perspective, the large number of cases at Bowdoin also provides an opportunity to better understand the epidemiology of pneumonia outbreaks.
"The more we can learn the better," Beckett said. "We have an opportunity to document what happens."
The CDC has been interviewing students who have contracted the illness, collecting laboratory specimens, and testing different diagnostic methods.
Beckett said that while outbreaks of walking pneumonia "are not rare, they are not common." In general, pneumonia most often occurs sporadically, but the close quarters of an institutional setting like Bowdoin increase the risk of outbreaks.
As of yet, the CDC has not localized the outbreak anywhere on campus. The public health advisory stated that "there is currently no evidence that cases have been clustered by residence hall or particular activities." Beckett said that this suggests that the illness has been transmitted through "person-to-person contact."
According to Beckett, since the illness is most commonly spread through "coughing, sneezing, and saliva," it is important to wash hands often. As part of its investigation on campus, the Maine CDC made a few recommendations to the College, which emphasized the importance of practicing "good respiratory hygiene," as well as encouraging ill students to "rest and stay home...until their fever has been gone for 24 hours."
On Tuesday, November 11, Dean of Student Affairs Tim Foster sent an e-mail to students' parents and guardians about the outbreak on campus. In the e-mail Foster wrote that 12 students currently have walking pneumonia. Foster also asked families to encourage their students to take preventative measures to stay healthy.
The Office of the Dean of Student Affairs has been communicating with faculty members to help ill students make arrangements for completing missed work. According to Foster, students should stay home from classes until they are feeling better and then make arrangements with their professors to make up work.
"When the Health Center notifies us that a student is sick, we connect with the student and inform the student's course instructors and adviser," Foster wrote in an e-mail to the Orient. "Students are encouraged to get better and then connect with their course instructors about making up missed work."
"Most faculty members are very understanding and accommodating. The key is good communication and that doesn't need to be in person," he added.