Amelia schools reopen after closing to battle flu
MARK GORMUS/TIMES-DISPATCH
An Amelia County school system employee cleaned a bus as part of the county’s actions last week to reduce the spread of flu.
Amelia County’s three public schools are back in session today after a week’s closing because of concerns over the H1N1 flu, including the death of a 6-year-old student.
And school absenteeism was reduced to 7 percent today, after spiking at 18 percent of students two weeks ago.
“It made sense to try to break the chain of infection,“ Amelia County’s school superintendent, Dr. David Gangel, said of the closing. The school system used the time to clean the schools thoroughly, he said.
“It appears the strategy worked,“ Gangel said.
More than 1,800 students attend Amelia’s public schools.
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Reader Reactions
But it’s not like school is the only place you can catch the flu. These kids (or kids anywhere) could have just as easily spread it around when out and about around the neighborhood, the grocery store, moving, bowling alley, etc. If you want to reeeeeeeally stop the spread then everyone would need to be quarantined in their own homes, healthy or sick, until not a single person has the virus. This was just a feel good measure that will not likely solve anything. Someone is back in that school today with active flu virus and will be spreading it on around to anyone who hasn’t yet had it.
Personally I think it is a good thing the schools closed. Amelia County schools are not like those in Richmond, Henrico, and Chesterfield and so on. All of these kids go to school together. By this I mean they all ride the bus to school at the same time, elementary through high school. This leads to a higher chance of the bug spreading around. Amelia is so small that all residents are affected by each other. I mean seriously, they only have one Grocery store and one stoplight. If they didn’t try something who knows how many kids would have been infected with this strain of flu. This action may have been inconvenient but it was needed.
A few yrs ago there was a particularly nasty flu that was going around my step kids school.. it was about a week before the winter break.. They were both getting good grades.. so my husband kept them out of school..
It isn’t so much the disinfecting process.. but keeping the little germ factories apart from each other for a little bit to give the bug a chance to “die off” in the population at school.
By the time winter break was over.. the bug had run it’s course with kids.. and they had been apart from each other for a few weeks..
What a waste. Now will all those healthy kids who were forced to stay home have to spend an extra few days at school in June?
Why is it that the government is making a big deal of the swine flu? Every year approx. 36K americans die from various strains of flu. A knee jerk reaction to new strain of flu can be very dangerous. What are the possible side effects of this new vacine?
I also agree with Anon as well, however I would like to add that the Government knew about this Swine Flu for almost a year, and they should have been more on top of this than they have.
When I see lines of people waiting for this flu shot and they are running out is disgraceful. However, again we have to depend on a company who is based in another country to make the flu shots for us.
Parents all over the area are hoping that their school district doesn’t suffer the same panic response.
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