The Student Health Center recently stopped testing students for the H1N1 virus and will no longer track the number of individual cases on campus.Testing students for the virus has become unproductive, said Julie Hupperich, associate director of the Health Center.The Health Center is still seeing a number of students with flu symptoms, but physicians now treat those symptoms assuming they were caused by the virus, Hupperich said.She said the nasal swab test previously used to confirm Type A influenza can be misleading. Positive test results would generally confirm the presence of the virus, but negative test results have a 60 percent chance of inaccuracy.Hupperich also said the $40 test results did not change the treatment prescribed to patients. Any students with flu symptoms are treated the same way.The test also requires about half hour of lab work, which created a bottleneck in the Health Center, Hupperich said.”We’re trying to provide access to all students, and anything that is slowing down the process is harmful,” Hupperich said.The Center for Disease Control and Prevention no longer recommends confirmatory lab tests because the virus is so widespread.The virus has spread to more than 120 countries and all 50 states. Most of the cases were reported in the Southeast.There are 991 confirmed H1N1 cases in Louisiana, but without individual lab tests, the CDC estimates more than 60,000 Louisianians have contracted the virus.The death toll from the virus in Louisiana reached eight Sept. 16 when a man from the Houma/Thibodaux area succumbed to the virus.Hupperich said the Health Center will be giving out seasonal flu shots starting Oct. 19. She said the clinic anticipates a higher demand for the vaccine because of the media attention the H1N1 outbreak has received.The CDC expects H1N1 vaccine availability as early as the first week in October, though more realistic expectations say mid-October.Kathleen Sebelius, U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services, said  during a conference call one dose of the vaccine should be sufficient to curb the disease and immune response starts after 10 days.Sebelius said college students fall into the target population for the first round of vaccinations. Children between the ages of 5 and 24 have been one of the hardest hit groups. Because interacting with other children has been a leading cause of the virus’ rapid spreading, Sebelius said.Sebelius said the H1N1 virus could become more virulent as it mixes with the seasonal flu. She said the virus has not mutated yet, but could become more dangerous as normal flu season approaches.Dr. Beth Bell, CDC, said the normal flu vaccine may still be useful to fight even a mutated strain of the virus, but other kind of interventions like antiviral shots need to be available.- – – -Contact Adam Duvernay at [email protected]