Schools reopening today; flu watch shifts to parents

With all the Puget Sound-area schools that had been shuttered because of swine flu reopened as of today — and the illness looking no more threatening than regular flu — the front-line defense against the spread of the virus now is shifting to parents.

The message: Parents should check for symptoms of flu and keep children home if they appear ill.

"We are asking parents and families to take primary responsibility for the health of their children," said Dr. Jeff Duchin, chief of communicable-disease control for Public Health — Seattle & King County. "Closing one school at a time was never meant to be a long-term response."

All nine schools in the state that were closed for a day or longer now have reopened.

The list includes six schools reopening today: Aki Kurose Middle School, Madrona K-8 and Stevens Elementary in Seattle (all on a two-hour delay); Woodmont K-8 (starting at 10:15 a.m., with no morning kindergarten) and Midway Elementary in Des Moines; and Jackson Elementary in Everett.

Madrona, the first to close, was out the longest — three days.

Even as students return, King County reported six more probable swine-flu cases Monday, bringing its total to 27. The statewide tally now stands at 45 cases in five counties, including 14 in Snohomish County.

Duchin said it no longer made sense to automatically shut down a school over an isolated infection. Not only does the virus appear to have already spread throughout the community, Duchin said, but most infected people have become only mildly ill.

Federal policy shift?

Federal health authorities also are retreating from aggressive school closures.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) until now has suggested closing schools for up to two weeks for confirmed or probable swine-flu cases.

"We are looking at our school-closure guidance, and we're having very active discussions about whether it's time to revise that," said Dr. Richard Besser, the CDC's acting director.

The plan in King and Snohomish counties now is to focus on keeping sick children out of school. Schools also are to stay alert to possible flu cases showing up among students and staff.

School districts welcomed the change in health-department policy, even if it is a challenge to explain to parents why a school had to be closed one day but could reopen only days later.

"We in education are used to having rules that do not change," the Everett School District wrote to parents. "In this situation, however, we are learning as we go — as is the rest of the nation."

Most of schools that were closed planned to hold staff meetings this morning, and some will have public-health officials on hand to answer parents' questions, too.

Schools will continue to send home students who show flu symptoms, and several districts said parents should be prepared for that.

For some schools, the closures, while difficult, weren't as disruptive as they could have been. At Stevens Elementary in Seattle, for example, students had finished taking the Washington Assessment of Student Learning, and an annual outdoor camp for fifth-graders was still a couple weeks away.

CDC test kits arrive

None of the 45 probable swine-flu cases in Washington have been confirmed by the CDC. But more than 95 percent of the samples sent by other states to the Atlanta-based agency have tested positive for the virus, officially called swine-origin influenza A H1N1, said Donn Moyer, a spokesman for the Washington State Department of Health.

Moyer said test kits have arrived from the CDC that are to enable the state laboratory in Shoreline to make the confirmation itself, cutting the turnaround time from about a week to two or three days.

Duchin said health officials reversed their recommendation on school closures because they were disruptive and "not the best method to control the spread [of swine flu] in the community."

Duchin said local health officials initially opted to close the schools partly to assess the potential threat from the virus, even though they consistently have said that it appears to cause symptoms not much different from seasonal flus.

Schools still could close again if swine flu were to spread rapidly through a school, said Dr. Gary Goldbaum, director and health officer of the Snohomish Health District.

So far, almost all the cases in Washington have been isolated.

Duchin said investigators have yet to find a pattern that might explain how the infections occurred.

Kyung M. Song: 206-464-2423 or ksong@seattletimes.com. Information from McClatchy Newspapers is included in this report.

Seattle Times staff reporter Janet I. Tu contributed to this report.