Take care of yourselves, college students.

Inside Higher Ed reports.

Infected

Outbreaks of norovirus on college campuses in Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania in the last month have sickened hundreds of students, and a handful of new cases have recently been confirmed at the University of California at Berkeley.

Miami University of Ohio reached roughly 200 cases by the end of last week, and Berkeley on Tuesday confirmed three of its own with another 26 reports of noro-like symptoms.

Often mistaken for stomach flu, norovirus is a highly contagious but relatively benign infection that can cause stomach pain, nausea, diarrhea and a low-grade fever. Because it’s so easily transferable, however — via contaminated food or contact with an infected person or surface — it has the potential spread very rapidly on campuses where many students live in close quarters.

At the University of Michigan, for example, a handful of cases reported over a weekend in mid-February blossomed into more than 150 over the course of the next week and then tapered off to “virtually no new reports” by Friday, according to a university spokesman. Just one student was briefly hospitalized for dehydration, but most simply stayed home for a few days, he said.

“The virus soldiers along from person to person until someone goes to work, and then a lot of people get ill,” said Timothy Moody, chair of Emerging Public Health Threats & Emergency Response Coalition of the American College Health Association and staff physician at California State Polytechnic University-Pomona. “It’s really uncomfortable but otherwise not really a problem for otherwise healthy people.”

Symptoms only last one or two days, Moody said, but even after you feel back to normal, the virus is transmittable for another three or so days.

“Employers and schools need to know they’re putting their patrons at risk if they let people come to work if they’re sick or too soon after they’ve gotten the illness,” Moody said.