The U.S. Centers for Disease Control released new school closure guidelines for the H1N1 pandemic flu in anticipation of the upcoming back to school start dates. New federal guidelines discourage school closures and emphasize prevention with hand hygiene promotion.
Washington health attorneys-Centers for Disease Control addresses school closures and the H1N1 pandemic flu.
Washington–As reported by Reuters on Friday, U.S. officials with Atlanta based, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) http://www.cdc.gov released new pandemic H1N1 swine flu guidelines for schools. About 55 million students, in 130,000 public and private schools, across the U.S. will begin to return for the fall 2009 start over the next few weeks. According to the Department of Education (ED) http://www.ed.gov, close to 7 million staff members work in schools across the country. The pandemic H1N1 flu, formerly coined the ‘swine flu’, is still of concern to federal and state health officials along with parents, teachers, and school employees.
Schools are urged to attempt to slow the spread of the virus if it happens to begin to spread faster with the return of students and employees to the 2009 scholastic year. Stressing good hand hygiene and keeping students widely spread are all suggested oppossed to prompt school closures and dismissals. The potential for the negative consequences of preemptive dismissals and sudden closures does not address students being left home alone, interruption of education, children missing meals, and needed health care workers missing shifts because they are forced to stay home with their children.
The World Health Organization (WHO) http://www.who.int/en/ claims the H1N1 flu is unstoppable. Health experts claim most people have no immunity to the virus which typically means more people are susceptible to becoming sickened with the virus, which can be deadly. The H1N1 flu is considered moderate which means people will be hospitalized and die from the virus, but most of the consumers infected will suffer mild to moderate symptoms and make a complete recovery in a few weeks. Researchers are aware the viral strain could mutate at any moment and become more serious increasing the death toll. Vaccine makers have been working overtime to provide immunizations. U.S. Officials say pregnant women, patients with chronic health conditions, children, and young adults are at the highest risk of serious illness and injury from the H1N1 flu and are strongly urged to participate in vaccination. U.S. officials don’t anticipate public vaccination to be available until mid-October.
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