Stagecoach

 8^th June 2009

Dear Parents,

BREAKING NEWS RE TEESSIDE HIGH AND THE OUTBREAK OF SWINE FLU

Following on from my phone call about Yarm Stagecoach classes being cancelled on Sunday at Teesside High School, events have taken a dramatic turn today when an outbreak of swine flu was reported on the front page of the “Evening Gazette”, amongst Teesside High`s own students.

I, of course, immediately tried to contact the Headmaster. He has apologised to me for not giving me the correct information about why the school was not accessible on Sunday, but said that they had been told that it was not to be made public until test results for swine flu were confirmed. This had only been the case this morning. Naturally he had not wanted us to risk our students, so had had to give another reason why we could not get access to the building.

ASSESSMENT OF RISK TO OUR STUDENTS

I personally feel that there is a minute chance that any of our students can be infected already. I believe this for the following reasons  - information as supplied by the Health Authorities:-

• The virus is water borne and can only survive on surfaces for 12 hours.
• The school has been deep cleaned and disinfected and is to close for a week to be absolutely certain that nothing can survive within the fabric of the building
• We have a pre-arranged absence from the school next weekend anyway, for the West End trip so that means that 2 weeks will pass before our students enter the building again. This will allow me to liase with the school prior to the weekend of our return, to make sure that no further outbreaks have happened from infected students returning to their classes.
• The virus has about a 3 day incubation period, so if any of their children return on the Monday and pass it on, we will know about it by Friday.
• On the last Sunday that we were in the building, their students had been on half term holiday all the previous week and so no infection could have survived that long, for our children to have picked it up.
• All the illness started as soon as their children returned after the holiday and the suspicion is that someone has returned home from holiday with the virus and carried it into school on the Monday of last week.
• All the illness has been confined to one of their classes and to one form room and that is not a room that we use for class teaching

So for all the above reasons, I believe that we are as safe as any other member of the public is, from catching the virus but we should also, naturally, remain vigilant. I am therefore including a list of symptoms below

SYMPTOMS  OF SWINE FLU

Thus far, the symptoms for anyone, in this country, who catches the virus, are mild and made milder by the Tamiflu drugs that are administered, once a positive diagnosis is made. They are fever, headache, coughs, sneezes, sore throat, tiredness and in some people sickness.  The virus is very contagious though so if you suspect that anyone has swine flu, you should ring your doctor and not take the patient into a doctor`s waiting room.

Good hygiene practices of sneezing into tissues and throwing the tissues away and plenty of routine hand washing is recommended. 

If anyone has any concerns after reading this letter then please ring me on 01325 337667 and I will address them for you.

Please keep checking back to our web site http://www.darlingtonandyarm.co.uk/ for any updates - particularly if you should attend Teesside High School for any classes on Sunday 21^st June. I will post an update on Friday evening 19^th June,  at the latest.

Best Regards,

Trudy Hindmarsh - Principal

This entry was posted on Monday, June 8th, 2009 at 6:09 pm and is filed under News, Parents. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.