Please note the following guidance to help prevent the spread of the flu virus at schools:
- Students and staff should wash their hands frequently with soap and water for 20 seconds. In general, students and staff should wash their hands after arriving at school, before touching food, after using the bathroom, and after coughing or sneezing. Please ensure that soap and paper towels are available and note that alcohol-based sanitizers are not as effective against spreading viruses as soap and water.
- Students and staff should cover their mouths and noses with a tissue when coughing or sneezing, or use their shirt sleeve, not their hands.
- Students and staff members who are sick, especially with fever, vomiting or diarrhea, should stay home to reduce the risk of spreading the illness to others. Children with fever, vomiting, or diarrhea should stay home until their symptoms are gone and they are free of fever without taking fever-reducing medicine for 24 hours.
- Students and staff members should get vaccinated against the flu.
- In addition to administering flu vaccines to adults, licensed pharmacists can now use an appropriate non-patient-specific standing order to administer flu vaccines to children between the ages of 2 and 17 years of age, on a temporary basis.