Virus closes Lafayette school

• By MARSHA SHULER AND SANDY DAVIS
• Advocate Capitol News Bureau
• Published: Apr 30, 2009 - Page: 1A

• Print
• Email
• Save
• Reprints
• Twitter
• Share

• Del.icio.us
• Digg
• Facebook
• Reddit
• 

Cathedral-Carmel School in Lafayette closed Wednesday after five sick students tested positive for a virus that accompanies the swine flu, Gov. Bobby Jindal said Wednesday.

Jindal said school officials accepted a state health agency recommendation that the school close until at least Monday as a “precautionary” measure until further tests can be completed to determine whether it is the swine flu.

The swine flu outbreak has led to deaths and a major health emergency in Mexico. So far, there has been one confirmed death in the U.S. — a 23-month-old child in Texas.

Louisiana has no confirmed cases of the illness.

Upon news of the closures, public and private school districts in East Baton Rouge, Livingston and Ascension parishes began notifying faculty and parents of their plans and precautions.

For instance, East Baton Rouge Parish school system spokesman Chris Trahan sent an e-mail asking to be notified if there is a “noticeable increase in the number of student absences.”

Kay Betts, headmaster of Episcopal School in Baton Rouge e-mailed parents asking that they notify the school if “they have been in an at-risk environment for the flu” and she instructed teachers to schedule “hand washing breaks” for students.

Bill Michelet, a spokesman for the Catholic Diocese of Baton Rouge, said the diocese would inform the schools in the eight parishes it oversees about the symptoms of the disease and the precautions school officials should take.

An Ascension Parish school system official said they also closely monitoring the situation.

“We have been working with the state epidemiologist,” said Johnnie Balfantz, a spokesman for the district.

Jennifer Wilkinson, the nursing coordinator for the Livingston Parish school system, said two doctors from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, called the CDC, told a conference of school nurses Wednesday that if there were to be an outbreak and the school had to close, the school would have to stay closed until seven days after the last child was diagnosed with the disease.

“The biggest thing they told us was that the best prevention is for people to stay home if they’re sick,” Wilkinson said.

The five ill Cathedral-Carmel students are all sixth graders, Jindal said. One of them had been in Mexico in the last two weeks, he said.