A warning has gone out to parents of Prince George’s County Public Schools students about a spike in hand, foot and mouth disease. So far, students in over 40 schools have reported cases of the virus.
A warning has gone out to parents of Prince George’s County Public Schools students about a spike in hand, foot and mouth disease. So far students in more than 40 schools have reported cases of the virus, impacting students from preschool to high school, since the school year began in late August.
“It is a communicable disease,” said Dr. Traci Jones, who is the supervisor for the Office of School Health for Prince George’s County Public Schools. “It is not a life-threatening communicable disease, but it is a communicable disease that is easily transmitted.”
She said kids should be properly washing their hands and staying home if they have symptoms, such as fever or open blisters.
The school system said the very early symptoms are similar to that of a cold: fever, lack of appetite, a sore throat and the other signs of a cold. Those appear about one to two days before blisters appear on the palms and feet, and sores develop in the mouth.
“You can spread it and have it for up to a week, and then usually one to two days before the blisters come, that’s when you get your most infectious,” Jones said. “But you don’t know that you’re infectious at the time, because you feel perfectly fine.”
That’s why she repeatedly stressed the need for parents and kids to wash their hands.
“One of the things I see people do now is they’re wearing gloves all the time, trying not to get it,” she said. “But if you come in contact with it and it’s on your gloves, all you’re going to do is spread it to others. So that is not an answer — to put gloves on — but hand washing is a big way of curtailing it.”
Jones also asked parents to thoroughly and repeatedly wipe down toys and other things that kids might put their hands or mouths on.
“Schools are increasing our cleaning protocols so that we can help curtail the spread of it. We have crews coming in after hours to clean,” she said. “We have instructed our cleaning crews to — what they would normally wait until at the end of the day to clean — do it twice a day in our attempts to curtail it as much as possible. We’re also going to start increasing hand washing for our students, making sure that’s done more frequently.”
Any child who does get the virus is being told to stay home until they’ve been fever free for 24 hours and all blisters on their hands have crusted over. Mouth sores that can cause a child to drool also need to be closed up.
“Our goal is to try to prevent the spread of this as much as possible,” said Jones.
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