Suburban schools mobilizing against swine flu

The students at Channing Memorial Elementary School in Elgin have a new task to complete every morning before going to lunch.

They have to walk the hand-sanitizer line.

Expanded use of sanitizers is one of the measures schools in Elgin Area School District U-46 are taking to ward off another outbreak of swine flu, also known as H1N1 flu.

"Our big focus is prevention," said John Heiderscheidt, U-46 school safety coordinator. "We want to minimize the number of students and staff who will be affected by the H1N1 virus so that our educational mission can continue."

Elgin schools are not alone. All over the suburbs, school administrators are mobilizing against the virus, which state health officials say is almost certain to return this fall and winter and which seems to disproportionally strike people under age 25.

Following new guidelines recently issued by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, suburban schools will immediately send home any student who shows up with a fever of more than 100 degrees - no exceptions. Schools also plan to deliver flu prevention messages - wash hands often, cough into your sleeve, etc. - to staff members and students via posters, age-appropriate videos and other presentations. And school nurses will keep a close watch on attendance patterns and report their findings to the local health department.

"We'll be in constant contact with the Kane County public health department," said Juanita Gryfinski, chair of the health services department in St. Charles Unit District 303. "We'll be monitoring absentee rates and trends in illness so that we can respond quickly to an outbreak."

When swine flu first hit in the spring, a number of suburban schools closed after learning of a single confirmed case. That's far less likely to happen this year. The CDC, which had recommended the closures in the spring, now says schools should be closed only in the event of a major outbreak.

The CDC also has changed its recommendation concerning when a student can return to school after coming down with swine flu. In the spring, the CDC said infected students should stay home for seven days. Now it recommends students return to school 24 hours after the fever ends, the same as for most other illnesses.

Another CDC guideline urges schools to separate sick students waiting to be picked up from their healthy classmates. Local officials said they plan to do that as much as they can.

There have been more than 3,400 confirmed or probable cases of swine flu in Illinois, the department of public health reports. To date, 359 of those resulted in hospitalizations. There have been 17 swine flu-related deaths statewide.

Damon Arnold, Illinois public health director, said Friday that because influenza spreads more easily in the fall and winter, more cases of swine flu are expected once the school year gets underway.

The CDC is hard at work on a swine flu vaccine, which the agency hopes to start distributing in October. In the meantime, officials recommend parents make sure school-age children get a seasonal flu shot; it won't prevent swine flu, but it will reduce the chance of confusing the seasonal strain with the more serious H1N1.

Suburban educators said that while they're doing everything they can to prevent a huge outbreak, they need parents' help.

"Prevention is what we're all working toward, and to be successful we need parents to teach proper hygiene habits at home," said Cassandra Williams, executive director of special education at Schaumburg Township Elementary District 54. "We'll be sending letters home and working with our PTA presidents to get that message out."

<div class="infoBox"> <h1>More Coverage</h1> <div class="infoBoxContent"> <div class="infoArea"> <h2>Related links</h2> <ul class="moreWeb"> <li><a href="http://www.idph.state.il.us/h1n1_flu/">Illinois Dept. of Public Health swine flu info center</a></li> </ul> <h2>Video</h2> <ul class="video"> <li><a href="http://video.ap.org/?pid=vCyEAZO7H0ochvhgLo9ynu_Axx6QAice&fg=rss&f=ILARL">First Person: Preventing Swine Flu at School </a></li> </ul> </div> </div> </div>