The first student diagnosed with meningococcal infection last Thursday was discharged from the hospital today, and the other two students are both doing well, according to Student Health Services officials.
The second student has been moved from the Intensive Care Unit to another room in the hospital, and the third is expected to leave the ICU as soon as a bed in another ward becomes available, SHS director Evelyn Wiener said.
She also confirmed today that two of the three Penn students - and likely the third as well - were infected with strain B, the only one of the five strains of meningococcal infection for which no known vaccine has been developed.
The vaccine protects against the four other strains, known as A, C, Y and W-153.
However, SHS is confident the antibiotic it has been using will be effective in fighting this strain, she added.
SHS is also still trying to confirm whether the two students admitted to the hospital over the weekend with flu-like symptoms truly have meningococcal infection, Wiener added, although both are currently in stable condition.
A few other students have been hospitalized for flu-like symptoms and other ailments usually seen at this time of year, like pneumonia, Wiener said, but they are unrelated to the original meningococcal cases.
She added that with some students, SHS is being cautious by bringing them in for testing and observation, but that there have been no more suspected cases of the infection.
"If we were to see any other suspected case, we would indeed make that announcement," she said.
Most Penn students became aware of the situation Thursday afternoon, when SHS sent a University-wide e-mail announcing that two students had been hospitalized with the infection.
SHS subsequently began to dispense preventative antibiotics to more than 3,000 students over the weekend.
However, "from an epidemiological standpoint," Wiener said, the outbreak is not officially over.
She confirmed that all students had common interaction through the Greek system, although she declined to name which particular fraternities or sororities had been affected.
"Students who are social in the Greek scene are social throughout many fraternities and sororities," she said. "It would be shortsighted to pin this on a particular house."
CBS3 is reporting that the two students originally infected both live in the Pi Kappa Alpha house, located at 3916 Spruce St., but University spokeswoman Phyllis Holtzman has repeatedly said she is unable to confirm whether the two students lived in the fraternity house.
An e-mail from Brown University Health Services to the school's student body also said the cases at Penn may have been linked to the fencing team.
Wiener said the precise cost of the mass dispensation of prophylactic medication will probably never be known, but that both the commonwealth of Pennsylvania and the City of Philadelphia had contributed parts of their budget to the operation.
Wiener confirmed that SHS contacted a number of Drexel University students and gave them the preventative antibiotic before the weekend, due to their social and romantic connections with the identified members of the Greek community at Penn.
More Drexel students were also treated at the clinics over the weekend, she said.
There are no plans for further clinics, and any other requests for prophylactic treatment will be channelled into SHS's regular appointments system, Wiener said.
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