Almost every University of Tennessee at Chattanooga athlete received a flu shot back in the fall.
But the inoculations did not prevent four men's basketball players from contracting the flu and requiring a 48-hour quarantine this week.
"It's not unexpected or all that uncommon, because vaccines are not perfect," said Sarah Stuart Sloan, an epidemiologist with the Hamilton County Health Department. "Usually, those who were vaccinated will have a milder case of illness."
The illnesses of Jeremy Saffore, Keegan Bell, Omar Wattad and Jeff Smith contributed to UTC having to postpone a Thursday night game at Western Carolina until tonight.
"It's not out of bounds to expect something like this to have happened," Sloan said. "We want these games to happen. We want these student-athletes doing their thing."
The UTC athletic training staff has the same sentiment. With four athletes getting sick, they want to ensure the virus does not spread around McKenzie Arena.
"For us, it's preaching hygiene and making sure those who are diagnosed are out of contact with others and monitoring closely anybody who has signs of it," head athletic trainer Todd Bullard said. "It's going to bring challenges, but the last thing we want to do is start knee-jerking.
"We have a plan and we're looking at every avenue we can from hygiene to containment to symptom management."
Athletes for all UTC sports are either in season or in the heart of offseason conditioning.
"There's nothing that indicates that this is an outbreak or pandemic," athletic director Rick Hart said. "It happens to be all on our [men's] basketball team, and it all hit within 12 hours."
Women's basketball coach Wes Moore reminded his players Wednesday to be careful and watch out for early symptoms.
"Our kids all had flu shots and we had a couple that joined us this semester [Taylor Hall and Faith Dupree], so we did make sure they got flu shots today," Moore said. "Other than that, we've just reminded them to wash their hands and make sure they're not eating after somebody, et cetera."
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