Kasaragod, Feb 25: An outbreak of H1N1 viral infection has been reported at the Jawahar Navodaya Vidyalaya at Periye in Kasaragod district, with five confirmed cases and 67 suspected cases under observation.
District Medical Officeer A.P. Dinesh Kumar said that only two of the five confirmed cases were hospitalised. All the 67 students of the residential school who were suspected to have the infection were quarantined to check the spread of the disease, he said adding that there was no need for panic.
The school authorities said the students first started getting fever with cough, sore throat and running nose on Thursday. Health officials collected the swabs of five students for testing in the virology laboratory at Manipal. All the five samples were tested H1N1 positive. The other students who were suspected to have been infected by the H1N1 virus were under observation, they said.
‘‘As the H1N1 virus is highly contagious, the school used some of the rooms in the hostel to quarantine them,’’ said Principal K.M. Vijayakumar. The students were all natives of Kasaragod district, he said adding that the weekend home visitation of the students was cancelled to prevent spread of the infection. The school has 520 students.
Maintaining cough etiquette, proper supportive care and avoiding public places are the only safety measures that need to be adopted for the time being at the school, senior Health officials said. Going by the symptoms, all children, including the five confirmed cases, continue to be treated as Category A cases under the H1N1 treatment protocol, State Nodal officer for H1N1, Amar Fettle said.
The fact that the outbreak was picked up very early, showed the alertness of the surveillance system of the Integrated Disease Control Project, which immediately acted on the incident report that a group of children had been reported with flu symptoms, he added.
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