Coughs echo in lecture halls, sniffles spread across study spaces and tissue piles collect in trash cans as flu season wraps up on campus. For many students, influenza is treated less like a serious respiratory illness and more like an expected part of winter.

Ruby Belin, a first-year nursing student minoring in public health, said the flu often feels normalized.

“I feel like because it’s so normalized, it’s like, ‘Why would I need to get a vaccine,’ it’s like, oh, ‘It’s just like a cold,’” Belin said.

Belin said her previous experience with the flu changed how she thinks about vaccinations.

“I had the flu one year, and I was like, ‘Oh my god, this is not good,’” Belin said. “Ever since then, I’ve been like, ‘I have to get the flu vaccine because I don’t want to experience something as severe as this again.’”

Students like Belin are part of a much larger pattern of people impacted by influenza yearly. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, since the start of the 2025-26 influenza season, there have been 26 million flu cases in the United States, with 340,000 hospitalized and 21,000 dead.

2,793 Minnesotans have been hospitalized with Influenza since July 2025, according to the Minnesota Department of Health dashboards. While older adults accounted for most hospitalizations, outpatient clinics reported more influenza-related visits among younger age groups that year.

Mona Mohamed, a sophomore majoring in health and wellness, said she recently missed class and teaching responsibilities while recovering from the flu.

“I couldn’t go to class or teach my lab section because I was sick,” Mohamed said.

She said the illness made it difficult to keep up with coursework while recovering.

“Honestly, just being sick and having school, it just puts you in a really bad place because you have to catch up with work and homework while also feeling really terrible,” Mohamed said.

Infectious disease epidemiologist Kelly Searle and respiratory infectious disease physician Beth K. Thielen said vaccination remains one of the most important tools for reducing severe illness and slowing the spread of influenza.

What is influenza?

Viruses that cause influenza belong to the Orthomyxoviridae family, types of RNA viruses classified into subclasses A, B, C and D. Types A and B are responsible for seasonal flu epidemics. In contrast, C causes milder illnesses and D mostly affects cattle rather than humans.  

The virus is transmitted through respiratory droplets when an infected person coughs, sneezes or talks. These droplets can be inhaled by nearby people or land on surfaces, where they may be transferred if someone touches the contaminated surface and then touches their eyes, nose or mouth. Symptoms are usually not severe, with most people experiencing fevers, coughs, headaches or sweating and chills.

Older adults, especially those 65 and older, and very young children, particularly infants under 1 year old, face higher risks of severe flu-related complications, which is why experts emphasize the importance of vaccination.

Importance of vaccines

Thielen, a clinician and respiratory infectious disease researcher at the University of Minnesota Medical School, said even lower-risk people should still get vaccinated.

“Somebody may not be at high risk of severe disease themselves, but they may be around someone who is,” Thielen said. “For that reason, if someone has close contact with older adults, young children, or immunocompromised people, we recommend that those close contacts get vaccinated.”

Vaccination helps protect individuals by reducing the severity of infection and the risk of spread, lowering the burden of outbreaks. Each year, researchers begin by using global surveillance data to identify which strains of influenza are most likely to circulate, then produce vaccines using egg-based, cell-based or recombinant methods. Vaccines trigger an immune response that helps the body recognize and fight the virus later.

“A big part of vaccination is developing herd immunity. The more people get vaccinated, the better able we are to fight infections and keep them from spreading,” Zeynab Adam, a junior majoring in Biology, Society and Environment, said.

​In Minnesota, only 33% of people have had flu vaccines since July 2025, according to the Minnesota Department of Health.

Susceptibility of an individual to an infection refers to an increased likelihood that the person will develop an infection due to things like a weakened immune system, age and the presence of certain health conditions.

“If we’re talking specifically about influenza, susceptibility means that each year we go in with almost an entirely susceptible population, right?” Searle said. “Because unlike something like measles, different strains of flu circulate every year, and we don’t retain immunity to all of the strains.”

She said getting vaccines before flu season prevents susceptibility. Searle added a low vaccination rate can spike flu rates in a population.

“33% overall is fairly low, which is why we saw a fairly large spike of flu this past season, because we’re just not able to interrupt or slow transmission with such low vaccine uptake,” Searle said, referring to Minnesota’s current vaccination rates.

Searle said fewer vaccinations could cause an increase in cases, as the spread happens more rapidly without interference. She added flu data reporting may only track a specific group of people, such as those tested in hospitals, meaning we should be careful how we interpret the data implications.

“A lot of times, [someone with the flu] can take an at-home test and stay home, or they just assume they have the flu and stay home for a few days. So the dashboard’s data are not capturing everybody who has the flu,” Searle said.

At the University, 62.9% of students had obtained the influenza vaccine in 2024, according to the college student health survey. 

Data for 2025 is not yet published.

Experts like Searle suggest general high vaccine coverage in a specific subset of populations can provide protection.

“If all of campus had 80% vaccine coverage, you’d actually have a really good chance of preventing outbreaks on campus,” Searle said. “The troubling part is that not everybody stays on campus all the time, so that gives the potential for somebody to get the flu somewhere else.”

Vaccination barriers

Even with vaccines widely available, experts and students said barriers such as misinformation, low awareness and limited urgency still keep many people from getting vaccinated. 

Thielen said one common misunderstanding is the belief that flu shots can cause influenza.

“I hear a lot that people worry they’ll get the flu from the vaccine. So I do a little teaching there. Most injectable flu vaccines don’t contain live viruses,” Thielen said. “They’re not actually capable of causing influenza infection.”

Thielen said many people mistake soreness, fatigue or mild fever after vaccination for illness, when those symptoms are often signs that the immune system is responding. 

Fourth-year student Farhiya Khalif said awareness of resources is a problem on campus, rather than access.

“On campus, there are a lot of ways that the University has combated access, for example, the Boynton Health clinic is available to students,” Khalif said. So the problem is more awareness, and not enough people are taking it seriously.”

Khalif said the University could do more to increase awareness by placing reminders in high-traffic campus spaces, similar to vaccine reminder booths often seen in clinics. 

“Whenever you go into a clinic, they have, like, these booths where people are like, Oh, did you get your shots? 
Did you get your shots?” Khalif said. “Like, kind of just reminding people, maybe if they could set up something like that in, like, places where a lot of students kind of go through or gather, they could improve awareness.”

Why it is not just a cold

“The thing about flu is that flu is definitely not just a cold,” Searle said.

The flu can be extremely dangerous, she added, and even if it does not affect one person as severely as it might an immunocompromised person, taking precautions against it is still important to protect overall public health.

“It can get dangerous really quickly, and one of the symptoms is really high fever, and fevers can be dangerous. Flu can also progress into pneumonia and other respiratory illnesses,” Searle said. “So the perception that it’s not a big deal makes people think that if they have flu, they can keep doing the things they want to do as long as they feel okay.”

Searle said this perception may encourage someone infected with influenza to continue going to class or attending social events, which could increase the spread.  

“A classroom is a great setting to expose other people to flu and to transmit it, because most of the time you’re talking and you’re in a confined space,” Searle said. “If somebody is treating flu as not really that big of a deal, they should know that it is a big deal, not only for themselves, because they should rest and get healthy, but also because they don’t want to potentially expose other people to the flu.

How policies can reduce the spread

When people are sick with the flu, they most often show up to class in order not to miss out on important lecture material and attendance points, according to students interviewed by the Minnesota Daily. This can increase the spread of infections as infected individuals are possibly coming into contact with unvaccinated populations.

“I feel like a lot of people, when they have a cold, sometimes, like if it’s not so serious, they could just leave and go outside and go around people because it’s like, oh, it’s not that serious, which increases spread,” Mohamed said.

Experts say policies aimed at preventing situations like this can prevent a large spread.

“I think one of the big things is potentially online classes for people who are sick, or flexible attendance policies, particularly when we get into the spring semester, because we start in January, and that’s when there’s a lot of flu,” Searle said.

Students say that harsh class policies increase the incentive for students to attend class even while sick, adding fuel to the fire.

“I found out that Boynton, which is accessible to all the U of M students, doesn’t give you doctor’s notes,” Mohamed said. “They do a self-reported illness where you fill out a form that says you attended, you went to an appointment at Boynton, or you were seen at Boynton.”

She said as professors do not take self-reports as a doctor’s note, students have to go out of their way to go to urgent care or a clinic to get an excusal. Those without insurance have to overcome financial barriers to get excused from exams or labs because of an illness.

“Why is that the option here on campus if that’s not something that will be accepted?” Mohamed said. “So it’s definitely a barrier to leave campus and go to an urgent care or an emergency care just to get that signed note for you to be able to get the accommodations that you need.”

In a statement to Minnesota Daily, Boynton Health indicated they have several options to receive vaccines.

They have drop-in vaccine clinics open Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays from September through January, and vaccines can also be obtained through scheduling an appointment with the Immunization clinic by calling Boynton Health at 612-625-8400. Anyone interested in available vaccines, scheduling and clinic hours can refer to the Boynton Health website.

Students like Mohamed and Adam talk about the importance of flexibility from professors and accountability among students to keep the overall population healthy.

“For all students, we should take charge of our health and be mindful of how it affects not only us, but also other people too,” Mohamed said. “If it’s available to you, get a vaccination, and faculty and staff need to be more aware that there are those barriers to getting notes and not coming into class for attendance.”