AUSTIN -- Tuesday is the last day for college students across Texas to prove they've gotten their meningitis shot.
In year's past, only students living on campus had to get the vaccination against bacterial meningitis. Senate Bill 1107 changed that, and now hundreds of thousands of other students are required to have the shot as well. Jan. 31 was the deadline to prove they’ve gotten it, or risk not being able to attend class.
Before Katherine Madler and Rick Liao returned to the University of Texas campus this semester, they made sure to get a meningitis shot.
“You're living together with a million people that you don't know, and you have no idea where they're from, and where their germs are from,” said Madler.
“UT wouldn't let us live here without it, so I was like, 'All right, not really much of a choice,'” Liao said. “It's definitely better with it than without it at all.
Bacterial meningitis is an aggressive infection -- one that the medical director of UT's Health Services says can spread from student to student all too easily.
“The one thing they don't think about is the sharing of the drinks, the eating utensils, smoking, hookah pipes, things like that that they're sharing respiratory droplets,” said Dr. Theresa Spaulding. “They can go from being healthy, alive to being dead within six to 12 hours.”
In the past 12 years, there have been five cases of meningitis on campus. Two UT students died. The third victim was visiting from Texas A&M.
“Typically roommates say, 'I just thought he was hung over,'” Spaulding said.
At the beginning of January, about 400 students still had not handed in their meningitis shot documentation, but before classes started, that number was down to just two.
UT spokesperson Tara Doolittle says a coordinated effort to get the word out is one reason why close to 100 percent got the shot on time.
“We've been doing outreach since last spring one,” Doolittle said. “We knew these new rules were going to be put in place.”
At Austin Community College, 14,000 students are affected by the new law; 9,000 still have to hand in their documentation.
Some students are encountering problems, because the shots are expensive, and there's no health clinic on the ACC campus. Others are seeking exemptions.
The good news for those students is they won’t be dropped from this semester's classes, but they won’t be allowed to register again until they're vaccinated.
