Flu Season Update

We want to thank our nursing staff and our students’ parents for their hard work in dealing with this year’s flu situation. In particular, I want to thank Marcia Skeffington, our Head Nurse, and Karen DeCampo, Public Health Nurse for all they’re doing to keep us updated. Our school nurses are constantly monitoring student absences and working with parents to make sure that any student who exhibits flu-like symptoms receives appropriate care. At this point, we’re seeing an increase in the number of absences across the district, but the situation is better than what we thought we might be facing at this point. Students may be out for various reasons. Our nurses are trying to track these absences and look for trends.

 I want to remind parents that if your child has a fever of 100.4 or higher, he/she must stay out of school until no fever is present for 24 hours without the use of medication (Tylenol, ibuprofen). If necessary, we may decide to increase the minimum time that a student must stay out of school. We also suggest that parents call their pediatrician for guidance on when they need to be medically evaluated.  Please be aware that the same rules apply to our staff members.

 We continue to work closely with Jack Fralick from the Woburn Board of Health. As you probably heard, available doses of the H1N1 vaccine are very limited at this point. This delay in producing vaccines is a nationwide problem. Obviously, planning for city-wide H1N1 flu clinics is severely limited when vaccines aren’t available. In the meantime, we’ll continue to follow all guidelines from the Massachusetts Department of Public Health as we head into this year’s flu season.

 For more information on influenza go to www.mass.gov/flu.