Outbreak subsiding at St. Charles East High; flu not main problem

The outbreak of sick students at St. Charles East High School is over, or at least tapering off, school and health department officials said Thursday. And when the last box of tissue is put away, data may prove the majority of sick students didn't even have the flu.

Phone calls made by high school teachers to sick students and their parents on Thursday showed only about 26 percent (about 569 students) of students at the school still felt too ill to come to school. That's an improvement over Wednesday when 34 percent of the student body said they were still sick. The high point for the outbreak was about 45 percent of the student body on Tuesday.

"We're obviously moving in a very positive direction," District 303 Superintendent Don Schlomann said.

Given the improvement, the district plans to reopen the high school on Monday. Extracurricular activity will kick back into action even before that. Athletic practices will resume Friday afternoon. The football game at home against St. Charles North will be played Saturday, along with the boys' soccer game and the first showing of the fall play. Students will make up for the lost days of school by having a fall quarter that will extend to Nov. 4, with standardized testing slated for Nov. 10.

Phone calls to check on the health status of students will continue Friday, as will the data collection on the nature of the illnesses by the Kane County Health Department. One of the mysteries of the outbreak is why other schools in the district, including schools where siblings of East High School students attend, didn't see a similar outbreak. The district has seen some spikes of absenteeism up to 14 percent in some of its other schools, but those numbers are also dropping.

Kane County Health Department Executive Director Paul Kuehnert said preliminary data show less than 10 percent of students saying they were sick had symptoms that fit the strict definition of the flu. Another 15 percent or so of the sick students had symptoms indicating some other respiratory illnesses, such as bronchitis. Then, at least another 25 percent of the ill students experienced gastrointestinal problems that included vomiting. The remaining 50 percent were absent due to what Kuehnert described as a "variety of other causes."

"There may have been an element of parents keeping children home out of a sense of wanting to be precautionary," Kuehnert said. "The bottom line is flu contributed to this, but it wasn't the core cause. There weren't 900 and something students at St. Charles East with H1N1."

Schlomann said, despite some fear mongering, there is no evidence indicating mold issues at the school in the past have resurfaced and caused any of the illnesses. Mold problems at the high school earlier this decade sparked lawsuits and $28 million of cleanup and infrastructure changes. Now, all of the district's schools are tested every year for mold."

"Clearly with the (illness) issues that we had here, most of them were gastrointestinal," Schlomann said. "Those aren't mold issues. We continue to have no concerns with regard to air quality at East High School."

The health department expects to issue a final report on the findings on Monday. That's the same day the county will make the first round of H1N1 vaccinations available to people in the high-risk group for that strain of the flu. Generally, the high-risk group is anyone 24 and younger. There are about 192,000 Kane County residents who fall into the category. About 12,000 vaccinations will be available at three sites Monday, including St. Charles North High School. Kuehnert said the three sites will have an equal amount of doses despite the possibility of increased interest at the St. Charles site because of the illness outbreak. People who have been tested for H1N1 and had a confirmed positive result have lifetime immunity from H1N1 and do not need to receive the vaccination. The county has 17,000 total doses on hand now. Officials expect to receive more doses as soon as next week.

"There will be enough vaccine for everyone, but it will take some time," Kuehnert said.