COVID-19 response steps mimic effort from 1918 influenza outbreak

In 1918, the University of Vermont gymnasium, currently the Royall Tyler Theatre, was converted into a temporary hospital space for influenza patients. Photo courtesy of UVM Special Collections.

A little over a century ago, UVM faced a calamity alarmingly similar to the current outbreak of COVID-19: the influenza pandemic of 1918. As thousands of cases of the respiratory illness sprouted across Vermont, the university mobilized its medical students and transformed its campus in a sweeping response. Those efforts are documented in a historical account titled “The War Service Record of the Alumni, Students and Faculty of the University of Vermont in the Great War 1914- 1918.”

Students from the College of Medicine were dispatched to Vermont communities most heavily stricken by the influenza.

On campus, the present-day Royall Tyler Theatre was the school’s gymnasium a century ago. It was filled with cots and converted into a medical clinic.

To exercise special caution, the start of the 1918-1919 school year was delayed to late October, and even then, the university found itself afflicted with a localized outbreak in November.

“The disease is again prevalent. College and health authorities are urging us to be careful for others, if not for ourselves,” pleaded Iona Irish, a student in the class of 1919, in a letter to the Vermont Cynic. “Of course we are all anxious to be at our duties after so long a delay, but here is a good chance to prove for ourselves the value of patience as a virtue. Cheer up! Some day things will approach the normal again!” Irish added.

Comparisons to the university’s current response to the COVID-19 pandemic are evident. In addition to Patrick Gym being converted into overflow hospital space, UVM nursing students last week were granted the option of early graduation in order to assist with the COVID-19 response in Vermont and elsewhere.

A 1918 edition of the campus publication Vermont Quarterly described UVM’s role aptly both then and 102 years later: “The doors of the institution are never closed.”