The Vancouver Island Health Authority has recommended closing a Metchosin elementary school "due to increased incidents of influenza-like illness." The Chief Medical Officer ordered the school closed immediately. Meanwhile, Decker Lake Elementary remains closed while Northern Health monitors other schools.
According to a VIHA news release published on Tuesday, about 25% to 30% of students at Hans Helgesen Elementary in Metchosin have been absent from school and reporting fever, cough and nausea.
According to the release, the school will remain closed until at least Friday, May 8 while tests are conducted. According to the release,
Public health staff are testing a number of students. Testing will include an assessment for H1N1 influenza virus, the strain of influenza that has recently been causing illness in Mexico and other countries. There have been 6 lab-confirmed cases on Vancouver Island to date.
Meanwhile, Decker Lake Elementary near Burns Lake remains closed. Ernie Mannering, director of instruction for the Nechako Lakes school district, told The Tyee that school staff are working on site, doing professional development and planning.
Mannering said Northern Health is monitoring absence rates at other schools, some of which are reporting absentees with "flu-like" symptoms. It's not certain, he added, how many parents have kept their children out of school as a precaution.
So far, says Mannering, the number of H1N1-positive cases is unclear. The three original cases may have grown to seven, but the locations are "in the region," not specifically at Decker Lake.
Mannering said Northern Health is working to identify who has tested positive and whether they were at the school when they might have been able to transmit the infection. He added that Northern Health is also trying to determine how much ordinary seasonal flu is at the site.
Crawford Kilian is a contributing editor of The Tyee.
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Van Isle
3 years ago
It should be easy enough to
It should be easy enough to find out what the absenteeism rate of any school, at this time of year, in past years and see if this a normal or abnormal.
morechatter
3 years ago
Lights Out?
How can the Homeless go home as women and children along with the elderly are forced to BC's disease ridden streets. As there has been cases of similar flu like symptoms and other question ables as they die on Vancouver streets. Its the disabled and the elderly and the sick along with women, youth and children who are faced with life and death as they have no way to fend themselves during an outbreak.
And if this one doesn't get them the next one will but who can ensure that is all who die as the homeless are easy targets on Vancouver's cold and callous streets. Rumour also goes they are quietly picking up people off the streets as familiar faces disappear off Vancouver's landscape never to be seen again. As homelessness is now a death sentence as its only a question of time before it lights out if they don't get off those deadly streets or if they do. I thought Canadians were not supposed to beleft to starve and die of cold and disease on Vancouver streets. But yet here in BC its a fight for sidewalk space as its almost like picking out your own grave as young ones and their moms cuddle in a door way for warmth.
http://www.fightflu.ca/prot-eng.html
morechatter
3 years ago
Predicated in Sweeps
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/andy-borowitz/cnn-warns-swine-flu-could_b_197301.html
Along with future pendemics as World Health Organizations asure this is only the start of future events to come.