Longer school closures in flu fight
Reported May 01, 2009
(05-01) 12:46 PDT SAN FRANCISCO — California schools where students are diagnosed with probable swine flu should close for two weeks, state health officials recommended Friday. And school districts where more than one school is found to have students with swine flu should consider closing all district schools for a similar period.
California Department of Public Health officials based the recommendations on new guidance issued Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Previously, schools had been advised to close for one week after a probable diagnosis
“Schools and childcare facilities should close for up to 14 days depending on the extent and severity of the illness,” the CDC said in its written guidelines. “This length of time is recommended because children are likely to be infectious for about 7 – 10 days after the onset of illness.”
State Superintendent Jack O’Connell passed along the guidelines to county and school district superintendents in a conference call Friday afternoon.
Some Bay Area schools that have closed because of probable swine flu diagnoses plan to follow the new guidelines, including schools in Contra Costa, where four schoolchildren have been diagnosed with probable cases, said Kate Fowlie, spokeswoman for Contra Costa Health Services.
Schools that have been closed in Santa Clara County, however, will stick with the original plan to keep schools closed for one week, said county health spokeswoman Joy Alexiou.
“It’s a recommendation, and we think it’s sufficient … to keep them closed for seven days at this point,” she said. “If there are more cases that develop later in the week we’ll reevaluate.”
One closed Santa Clara County school, Rucker Elementary School, will reopen even earlier, Alexiou said. The suspected case that led to the school’s closure came back negative for swine flu after further testing; the school will reopen Monday.
Influenza type A, subtype H1N1 – more commonly known as swine flu – has now been detected in eight of the nine Bay Area counties: a total of 19 probable cases and three confirmed as of Friday evening. As of Friday evening, Napa was the only Bay Area county without a reported case.
The most recent county to report a case was Sonoma County, where health officials on Friday described the patient as an adolescent girl who traveled recently to Mexico. The state has not yet confirmed it as a case of swine flu.
The girl is a public school student, officials said, but had not attended classes since returning from Mexico. Officials, therefore, were not closing schools in Sonoma County.
Alameda County officials released more information about their one probable case, describing the patient as a 50-year-old woman with no recent history of travel to Mexico.
San Mateo and Marin counties also have cases involving patients who had not traveled to Mexico, which local health officials suggest means the bug is now widespread. Many early cases in the United States involved people who had recently been in Mexico.
“This may be an indication of transmission of the virus in the community,” said Dr. Fred Schwartz, public health officer in Marin County, where a child whose family had not been to Mexico was diagnosed preliminarily with swine flu.
Late Friday, Santa Clara County officials announced their ninth probable case, a 73-year-old woman who was hospitalized for five days and is now recovering at home. Hers is the first Bay Area case known to have required hospitalization.
None of the Bay Area counties have detected swine flu in more than one school in the same district. However, state health officials said Friday that a district should consider closing all schools in its jurisdiction if students two or more of its schools come down with the disease.
State education officials said they were aware of the guidelines, but stressed that the CDC said the final recommendation on closing schools or districts should be made by local health and education officials. Some Bay Area school officials said in the event that swine flu is found in two schools in one district, the decision to close may be made not by school officials, but by public health officials.
“They would make the call,” said San Francisco school district spokeswoman Gentle Blythe.