37 sick on CMU campus

Food seems to have been eliminated as the source of the recent health scare at nearby Carnegie… Food seems to have been eliminated as the source of the recent health scare at nearby Carnegie Mellon University; however, officials still haven’t been able to identify the actual cause.

According to Guillermo Cole, a spokesman for the Allegheny County Health Department, after talking to 27 of the 35 patients, officials have found no common link as to where or what they all ate or even a common place that they all were at.

“We don’t suspect food as the culprit here,” he said. “It does not appear to be food related, based on the fact that they don’t have much in common as far as what they ate or where they ate at.”

The only apparent common ground is that they were all on CMU’s campus, but that is a rather large area for an illness to be spread out, he added.

Starting on Thursday evening between 9 and 10 p.m., students started reporting feeling ill, according to Cole. Throughout the night, seven people went to UPMC Presbyterian Hospital’s emergency room since the student health services department was closed. No one needed to be hospitalized because of his or her symptoms, he said.

People continued to report intestinal problems until Saturday. Problems reported included nausea, vomiting, stomach cramps and diarrhea. Some people also had a fever.

According to Anita Bostjancic, an administrative manager for Pitt’s student health services, Pitt students have not been affected by this ongoing problem.

The health department is currently waiting for results from testing to find out more information about the cause of the illnesses. According to Cole, the results should be in during the next day or so.

As of Monday, everyone contacted by the health department was either fully recovered or getting better, Cole said.

Anita Barkin, CMU’s director of health services, said people should wash their hands well to avoid getting infected by the virus or bacteria that is causing these illnesses.

Since there appears to be no common food cause or other known source of the illness, though, the health department is not issuing any special precautions.

Except for two of the 35 people who fell ill, all were students. The two nonstudents were CMU staff workers.

A Pennsylvania Department of Health spokesman directed questions to the county health department.