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BATON ROUGE, LA (WAFB) - Two hundred students, about 18 percent of total enrollment, were absent Monday from an Ascension Parish school where a student who attends the school was identified as a victim of swine flu.
A spokesman for Ascension Parish schools says it is believed that students were likely kept home from school by their parents as a precaution.
The student, a 10-year-old boy, is one of about 1,100 students enrolled at Lake Elementary School in St. Amant.
School leaders say the last day the student attended class was Monday, May 4. He will not be allowed to return to school until "the Office of Public Health clears his return," the school system said in a statement.
Three school nurses were on campus this morning to monitor students. A professional cleaning company arrived on campus this weekend to cleaningecfting the school.
As of Sunday, there were seven confirmed cases of swine flu in Louisiana, health leaders said.
In other cases around the state where school children have become sick, their schools have been closed as a precaution.
Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal said this weekend that Lake Elementary would not be closed because no other students had shown symptoms of swine flu, and there was not a significant number of absences at the school last week.