USC is still in the “peak” of flu season, but influenza A cases are plateauing and are expected to dip within the next few weeks, Chief Campus Health Officer Dr. Sarah Van Orman said Tuesday in a briefing with campus media.

Although influenza A cases have potentially peaked, Van Orman said a peak in influenza B — a separate strain of the virus — often comes soon after, and that Student Health was starting to see influenza B cases on campus. Influenza B is less severe than influenza A, but comes with additional gastrointestinal effects such as diarrhea, she said. It is possible to have both influenza A and B in one flu season, Van Orman said.

Van Orman said influenza spikes have historically occurred after long weekends or breaks, such as the three-day President’s Day weekend, and that the USC community has a low rate of flu vaccinations, reflecting a nationwide trend.

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“Not only students on our campus, but also community wide and nationwide, flu vaccine levels are falling in the post-pandemic era, which is a really unfortunate consequence of a lot of different factors that are going into misinformation and disinformation about [the] influenza vaccine,” Van Orman said. “We have a relatively unvaccinated population.”

Van Orman said the concerns about avian flu came from the possibility of the virus jumping from a bird population to a human population. Because avian flu is not a virus humans have encountered before on a large scale, Van Orman said humans lack immunity to it.

While eggs from Trader Joe’s and Target are safe to consume, Van Orman said it is important to avoid consuming raw egg products or unpasteurized dairy, and for people to be educated on avian flu and aware of where their food comes from.

“There’s probably not a lot an individual can do to protect themselves [from avian flu],” Van Orman said. “Things can be a major public health, community threat without necessarily being such an individual threat that we need to change our individual behavior, and I think [avian flu] is one of those for now.”

Van Orman said avian flu is not an immediate threat to campus, but if it became one, USC would implement its “very detailed” communicable disease plan and begin testing for avian flu in wastewater, which is currently done with influenza, norovirus and coronavirus.

“In the event [avian flu] were to become an issue, we have the ability to respond to it,” Van Orman said. “We have [wastewater testing] already in place, so we would be able to rapidly detect it if we needed to. [That is] not needed right now, because of where [avian flu] is, but it’s really important that people follow this.”

The Student Wellness Index Survey opened today and will remain open until April 11. Van Orman said student participation in the survey is used to assess progress on the USC Wellbeing Collective’s eight key performance indicators. Indicators include high-risk alcohol consumption and sexual assault. The SWIS asks questions related to these indicators, and uses the received data to track student well-being on campus.

“[SWIS is] really the way we can, with our colleagues in student life and other campus offices, really advocate for students’ needs, and also let students advocate by demonstrating where there are areas of unmet need and wellness, and also where we are actually seeing a lot of successes,” Van Orman said.