With flu season almost in full swing, Thomasville City Schools Board brought in a local expert to try and set the record straight Tuesday night at its monthly meeting.

Layton Long, Director of the Davidson County Health Department, told board members that this is an unusual year in terms of the flu season due to the fact there are two strands to worry about — seasonal and the H1N1 virus. Long said H1N1 is a new virus that started affecting people in the spring and never really went away, and is different from seasonal flu.

“It is the flu,” Long said of H1N1. “It’s not something that is necessarily worse than seasonal flu in terms of symptoms but it is the flu. Normally we see very little flu activity in April, but as the summer months progressed we saw more and more cases, which is atypical with what you see with the flu.”

Just like a normal flu strand, H1N1 spreads person-to-person and through contaminated hands or surfaces. Symptoms are fever, cough, headache, muscle or joint pain, sore throat, runny nose, vomiting and diarrhea. What makes H1N1 different from seasonal flu is the fact it affects people ages 5-24 and the numbers drop the older a person is.

“This virus is unusual,” said Long. “Normally every flu season we gear our vaccination programs towards the older folks because they tend to have the more severe symptoms. As you get further out in years, there’s some resistance from historical H1N1.”

While city schools have yet to be hit with mass absenteeism, Long said the board should be prepared for such an event. Students and faculty who contract the flu are being told to stay home while they are sick for at least 24 hours after any fever is gone. Preventive measures include washing hands regularly and avoiding contact with one’s nose, eyes and mouth. Both flu strands are very contagious.

“Right now, I’m not hearing of any excessive absenteeism at this point,” Long said. “We can expect some. It’s out there.”

Vaccinations for both strands are becoming available. Liberty Drive Elementary held a flu clinic last week and Thomasville Primary School will be having one on Monday where students can receive a vaccination. There is not a universal flu vaccine, however, and people wanting to get completely vaccinated will need two separate shots. Kim Frank, the health department’s director of nursing, said plans are in the works to get all 32 elementary schools in the county vaccinated within the next few weeks.

“We have made provisions for our students if we see this hitting our schools,” said TCS Superintendent Keith Tobin. “We’ve got something in place to take care of it. The worst thing we can do is panic and see it spread. Right now, we’re in pretty good shape.”

In other business:

• TCS finally has a budget for the upcoming fiscal year. Tammy Stromko, TCS Finance Director, said the school system lost $540,000, or 5.5 percent, of its budget from a year ago due to the struggling economy and cuts passed on by the state. TCS had to make $393,000 in discretionary cuts and $706,000 was lost in instruction and support.

• Two policy revisions on restraint and harassment and bullying were tabled to next month. James Carmichael, TCS associate superintendent, said revisions were needed to meet with state guidelines. One of the revisions said school personnel may restrain a student in the event of a fight or a person yielding a weapon. The revision to harassment and bullying expands what groups fall under the policy.

• TCS named Thomasville Middle School’s Diane Roberts and Ed Richardson and TPS’ Rosa Holland and Sarah Brown as its monthly VITAL award winners.



Staff Writer Eliot Duke can be reached at 888-3578, or duke@tvilletimes.com.