Re: Five cases in Coquitlam schools
http://www2.canada.com/coquitlamnow/news/story.html?id=99e99613-e91d-4a81-ac81-9e6b3c04c6bd
Five cases of H1N1 virus at schools
Jennifer McFee, Coquitlam NOW
Published: Friday, June 12, 2009
Five cases of the H1N1 virus have been confirmed at Tri-Cities schools in the past week, and health officials say there could be more.
As of Thursday afternoon, three cases of the swine flu virus were reported at Gleneagle Secondary, plus one each at Heritage Woods Secondary and Glen Elementary.
Mark Bigham, medical health officer for Fraser Health, said the students are recovering, although
one child with an underlying health condition was hospitalized briefly.
"We have five right now that we're aware of, but there's probably more out there because we know that the virus is circulating in the general community. It's not surprising that we would see these cases," Bigham said.
"
They don't appear to be of any interrelationship to each other. It's not evident that the infections were necessarily acquired at school. For example, in Gleneagle the three students are all in different grades, so there's no known association where one could have passed it directly to the other. So there's a very good chance that they may actually have acquired these outside of school."
However, Bigham said person-to-person transmission of respiratory viruses is higher in places like schools, where people are in close proximity for most of the day.
"That's a setting where there could be a higher potential risk of passing the virus on to others and causing a cluster of cases. In that sense, kids have a higher potential risk if an infectious child shows up at school. That's why we want to encourage parents to keep their sick kids at home," he said.
"That could be a challenge for a lot of parents, where they both work and they don't have other childcare options readily available. That's a real practical challenge for some families."
Yesterday (Thursday), the World Health Organization raised the H1N1 influenza alert to the highest pandemic phase -- making it the first outbreak to reach this level in 40 years.
Nearly 30,000 cases have been reported worldwide, with 151 confirmed in B.C. and about a third of those in the Fraser Health region.
Dr. Margaret Chan, director-general of the World Health Organization, said H1N1 is different from other seasonal flus since healthy young people seem to be more susceptible.
"We know that the novel H1N1 virus preferentially infects younger people. In nearly all areas with large and sustained outbreaks, the majority of cases have occurred in people under the age of 25 years," Chan said in a June 11 press statement.
Cheryl Quinton, School District 43 spokesperson, said the district has been working with Fraser Health to prepare information letters for parents.
"What we're advising the parents is to always be talking to your children about extra diligence about handwashing ... And from a school district perspective, our maintenance department is stepping up their disinfecting cleaning at these schools," she said.
"Also the public needs to know that in all of these cases, they are not severe. In fact, in several instances, the kids are already back at school."
More information on the H1N1 virus is available in six languages on the school district website at
www.sd43.bc.ca.
