Flu blues: Outbreak in SAD 27 causes attendance to plummet

loading...

FORT KENT – Schools in SAD 27 are using this week’s vacation to rid their buildings as best they can of the microscopic organisms responsible for outbreaks of influenza that have hurt student and faculty attendance over the past few weeks.

In SAD 27, so many students were absent from the Fort Kent Elementary School that officials were required to call the Maine Center for Disease Control and report those numbers.

SAD 27 includes elementary schools in Fort Kent, Wallagrass, Eagle Lake and St. Francis, and Fort Kent Community High School.

“We were instructed to call [Maine] CDC with a daily count due to the flu when the numbers got to a certain point,” Patrick O’Neill, SAD 27 superintendent, said. “That began about three weeks ago.”

Hardest hit in the district was the elementary school in Fort Kent.

School secretary Jill Caron said she was required to call the Maine CDC whenever absentee rates rose to 15 percent or greater of the total student population.

That happened three or four days three and two weeks ago, she said. Those percentages translated to between 73 and 75 students absent at one time in a student body of 488.

“I’ve only been here four years, but I’ve never seen anything like this before,” Caron said Wednesday afternoon.

In SAD 27, it’s not just the students feeling the effect.

At any one time during the outbreak, O’Neill said, eight to 15 teachers have called in sick.

“It’s fairly typical when kids start getting sick to see five or 10 absent when it’s not a heavy [flu] strain,” O’Neill said. “But it’s been consistently high and heavy for the past three weeks.”

This coincides with the findings from the Maine CDC.

“Over the period of the past several weeks it has become a tough flu year,” Geoff Beckett, assistant state epidemiologist with the Maine CDC, said. “It’s all coming at once.”

The most recent data available from the Maine CDC show the state at “regional activity level.” However, according to Beckett, that could increase with the release of the latest data today.

“We are clearly seeing an increase in reported outbreaks of both Type A and the Type B strains,” Beckett said. “Some areas are more hard hit than others.”

According to the Maine CDC Weekly Influenza Surveillance Report of Feb. 13, three Aroostook County schools were reporting influenza-like illness outbreaks.

On Feb. 4 one school reported 28 students absent in addition to 11 staff members due to confirmed Influenza A.

The previous week, two Aroostook County schools reported 27 and 15 students absent, respectively. Only one was attributed to the Type A strain while the other was not specified due to a lack of data.

Beckett declined to identify the specific schools.

Schools are required to report to the Maine CDC when the absentee rate is above 15 percent to give the agency an idea where an outbreak may be occurring, Beckett said.

Last week the Bangor Daily News reported the Maine CDC had seen a big jump in confirmed cases of Influenza B subtype that officials say could point to a severe flu season. While symptoms caused by the B subtype are usually less severe than those caused by the more common Influenza A, the specific strain of B virus emerging this season is making people sicker than usual.

The flu experienced annually in the United States and other countries is a respiratory illness caused by various strains of the influenza virus. Symptoms include fever, cough, sore throat, aches and fatigue. Treatment includes rest, fluids and fever-reducing medications such as acetaminophen. Some high-risk patients may be prescribed an antiviral medication to help them recover.

In addition to recommending an annual flu vaccine, public health experts say washing hands often, covering sneezes and coughs, and staying home from work or school when sick will help limit the spread of influenza.

Beckett said Mainers who have not gotten a flu vaccine yet should contact their health care provider or a local health care agency or hospital.

“We have in no way changed our recommended policy on vaccines,” he said.

In SAD 27, O’Neill said staff are making a concerted effort to air the buildings out now that the students are on vacation.

“We’ve contacted the nurses in each school and instructed the custodians to disinfect everything they can, including doorknobs, desks, computers and keyboards,” the superintendent said.

That’s exactly what Jesse Marquis, head custodian at St. Francis Elementary School, was doing Wednesday.

“I’ve been using a bleach solution to clean all that I can that comes into contact with the kids,” Marquis said.

There is similar activity at the schools in Eagle Lake and Wallagrass.

“The night custodian has been washing all the desks, door handles, counters, pretty much everything with a bleach solution,” Beth Gagnon, Eagle Lake school secretary, said. “We had 28 to 30 kids absent out of 97 total.”

Weathering the outbreak a bit better is Wallagrass Elementary School where Jessica Audibert, the principal’s secretary, said the most students out one week were 10.

“We’ve been lucky,” Audibert said. “Plus, our teachers clean the desks and doorknobs all the time.”