Investigation: In 2018, the University of Maryland became the epicenter of an outbreak of adenovirus, which can have symptoms similar to the cold or flu. The school waited 18 days to inform the campus. That decision left vulnerable students in the dark.
It had been six days since Olivia Shea Paregol walked out of the University of Maryland health center without an answer for why she felt so awful.
Her skin was pale, and dark circles cupped her eyes. The lymph nodes in her neck had swollen so much they felt like golf balls. The freshman — who turned late-night trips to the dining hall into stargazing adventures, belted out Miley Cyrus songs on demand and easily flipped strangers into friends — was sprawled across the elevator floor.
In November and December, the University of Maryland would become the epicenter of an outbreak of adenovirus, which can have symptoms similar to a cold or flu. But certain virulent strains can sicken healthy individuals and be particularly dangerous to people with weakened immune systems — people like Olivia, who was on medication for Crohn’s disease, a serious digestive tract condition.But the university waited 18 days to tell the community after learning the virus was present on campus.
In early November, the virus was quietly spreading through campus. Only days after Olivia had slumped in the elevator at Elkton Hall, she was fighting for her life at Johns Hopkins Hospital. When Olivia was accepted at the University of Maryland, it checked all the boxes and was only an hour away. After Olivia learned she had been assigned Room 3152 at Elkton Hall, she felt lucky to have landed in a dorm with air conditioning.
Mid-September Mold issues arise It was one of the soggiest summers in Maryland history. By the end of September, more than 50 inches of precipitation had fallen. Eventually, 2018 would go down as the region’s wettest year on record. On Sept. 18, a resident assistant sent a message to students instructing them to check for mold. It began to invade Elkton — on the blinds, under the beds, inside sneakers and all over the cooling units. On Sept. 18, a resident assistant sent a message to students on Olivia’s floor instructing them to check their rooms for mold: “Best way to see it is in the dark using a flashlight . . . It’ll probably look fuzzy and green.”“look under ur drawers on ur dresser,” Olivia responded.
McBride, 50, handed out business cards and told the roughly two dozen parents and students in attendance to call him at the health center if they had concerns. That report would find that at Elkton Hall, there were “longstanding concerns for humidity levels.” Cooling systems installed in 2011 were not designed to remove moisture from the air and allowed humidity to rise, making the building susceptible to mold growth, the report said.
Late September Students move out Riley and Sarah, who both battled coughs and congestion, on Sept. 23 moved to the nearby Cambria Hotel with other eighth-floor residents. Contractors in hazmat suits and masks began cleanup efforts at Elkton. Let us know Did you receive inadequate care at a college student health center? Tell us your story. After more than a week of relentless coughing, Olivia now had a sore throat and chest congestion. On Sept. 26, she also visited the student health center at the urging of her parents. There, a doctor diagnosed her with an unspecified viral upper respiratory infection with a cough and “exposure to mold,” according to her medical records. She was prescribed cough medicine and a nasal saline spray.
Olivia responded: “My roommate actually already had us moved. Thank you for reaching out, but I’m already in a hotel at the moment.” “It was almost like a factory,” Hayes said of the university health center. “They’d tell students, ‘You’re fine, you’re fine, you’re fine.’ ” When his father drove him back to College Park, the son fell ill again, so they headed to the health center.
Jordan McNair, then a high school football lineman, in 2016. “You entrusted Jordan to our care and he is never returning home again,” President Loh told the McNair family. “i can’t swallow my own spit,” Olivia texted Sarah on Oct. 31, “and my neck is so lumpy bc my lymph nodes so swollen.” The virus was in the news: It had been linked to the deaths of children with weakened immune systems living at a long-term care facility in New Jersey. The outbreak ultimately killed 11 children and sickened more than two dozen others.
McBride, however, did not advise the committee of the confirmed case of adenovirus or the second suspected one, according to the minutes. Asked why he didn’t bring up adenovirus, McBride told The Post that it is “not currently a reportable condition . . . we were more focused on what we knew at that time.”
That Friday evening, McBride sent out a campuswide email about flu and virus prevention techniques, such as washing hands, and noted that there had been several cases of hand, foot and mouth disease. He made no mention of adenovirus. They knew she had pneumonia but it was unclear as to what had caused it and why she wasn’t getting better. They continued to treat her with antibiotics.
Ian and Meg drove to Hopkins. They took the elevator to one of the top floors of the hospital and stood by the window. There, they stared into the night sky and waited for the flashing lights and whirring blades of their daughter’s helicopter.“Okay you’re scaring me,” Sarah wrote. “I just wanna know ur okay/coming home tomorrow.”
McBride responded quickly and traded emails with Megan’s mother. “We’ve discovered several cases of a particularly nasty strain of adenovirus ,” McBride wrote in one message. “If Megan has not been tested for this, we can either perform a swab at the UHC for it or you can ask her current caregiver to test for it.”
“We’ve had a couple of cases of adenovirus appear,” McBride responded, according to Ian. He said he told McBride to immediately call Hopkins to share what he knew. In Olivia’s case, doctors didn’t wait. On Nov. 13, hours after tests confirmed she had adenovirus, they began to administer cidofovir. On Nov. 15, McBride gathered the infectious disease committee — this time to talk about the growing number of adenovirus cases. The university’s plan for responding to low-level health threats states that officials should be “providing information to the community about the infection in question, increasing prevention measures in resident halls/dining halls/public locations.”
Crankfield-Edmond later said the state instructed her not to make anything public until final results were available. Early Sunday morning, on Nov. 18, the Paregol family made the 45-minute drive home from Hopkins to shower and change clothes. A nurse called with grim instructions: Come back as soon as possible.
Meg Paregol stands in her daughter Olivia's bedroom at her home in Glenwood. Ian Paregol sits for a photo after getting a tattoo in memory of Olivia. LEFT: Meg Paregol stands in her daughter Olivia's bedroom at her home in Glenwood. RIGHT: Ian Paregol sits for a portrait after getting a tattoo in memory of Olivia.
McBride privately expressed concern that an upcoming news article in the Baltimore Sun about the adenovirus outbreak might suggest that the University of Maryland “should have done more,” he wrote in an email to Crankfield-Edmond, the Prince George’s County health official. The Paregol family spent Thanksgiving planning a funeral. Two days later, on a rainy Saturday, the ground so wet that heels sunk into the mud, Olivia’s family and friends gathered at the Good Shepherd Cemetery in Ellicott City, Md.
The Paregols wanted to sit face-to-face with the university president and try to understand why their daughter was dead. Two teenagers within six months had lost their lives. Ian and Meg wondered: Had the school learned nothing from Jordan McNair? Loh, according to the Paregols’ recollection, responded that he had many employees and relied on their expertise for advice.
Clement, in a recent interview with The Post, said she stood by the decision to take 18 days to publicly disclose the presence of adenovirus and felt reassured after two outside physicians reviewed the response to the outbreak. “We responded as quickly as we could,” she said. “They confirmed that the way we handled it was well done.”
Days after Olivia’s funeral, her friends Humza and Megan returned to the dorm and found mold growing on the shoes in their closets. Housing officials gave Humza a humidity monitor for his room.In early January, Sarah and Riley joined Olivia’s family at Elkton Hall to clear out the rest of her belongings. Olivia’s parents and sister pulled up to the dorm on a cold, cloudy morning. They stood silently with housing officials and waited for the elevator, holding empty duffel bags.
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