UMBC administrators have discussed contingency plans such as moving large numbers of classes online and setting up housing for sick students who could not get home. "We need to overprepare without overreacting," said Nancy Young, vice president for student affairs.
The campus health center plans to hand out flu kits - complete with tissues, over-the-counter medication and instant soup packets - to arriving students. The center will have an isolation room set up for students showing flu symptoms.
Young said the university would not close unless "the reported illnesses are so high that there are simply not enough people to run daily operations."
Hopkins will ask students with flu symptoms to go to the health center and then remain in their rooms until they go 24 medicine-free hours without symptoms. The school will also ask professors to be tolerant of students missing class because of the flu.
If the university had to suspend classes, it could finish a semester during January or even during the summer, O'Shea said.
At College Park, health officials will encourage sick students to go home (75 percent live in Maryland) and if not, to isolate themselves in dorm rooms, where friends could bring takeout food and other essentials. The university dealt with five cases of H1N1 over the summer and sent the patients home to recover in each instance.
The university has also encouraged faculty to consider online alternatives to their lessons and to relax attendance policies in the case of a flu outbreak.
At the peak of a typical flu season, 1,000 students might show symptoms, Clement said, but College Park officials expect more this year. "We've dealt with it before, but maybe not in the quantities we're expecting," she said.
Inside
State begins setting up vaccine network. PG 12
