Warm Weather Brings Relief : Schools Are Hard-Hit by Outbreaks of Flu

School and college officials in Orange County are reporting unusually high rates of absenteeism caused by outbreaks of influenza.

Education officials said that flu has swept through school after school since December, with both students and teachers stricken.

Some school officials reported a tapering off of massive flu outbreaks since the past few days of very warm weather. But Dr. Thomas Prendergast, Orange County’s epidemiologist, said Tuesday that “it’s too early to say that the flu is no longer spreading.”

Prendergast said influenza has caused “at least a dozen deaths” among nursing home patients since this winter’s siege began in December.

A Times spot check of several large school districts on Tuesday found that large numbers of students and teachers had come down with the flu since December.

“I didn’t know about this before, but I’m not surprised,” said Prendergast, when asked to comment on the flu outbreak in schools. “The disease is widespread in the county.”

Santa Ana Unified School District, largest in the county with 38,500 students, reported Tuesday that teacher absences because of flu were running up to 66% higher than usual. Student absences also were reported high, but exact figures were not available.

Most school officials said the flu attacks began in December and continued through January and early February. Prendergast also confirmed that the flu outbreak was first noticed in December.

Influenza, an illness caused by a virus, is characterized by fever, muscular pain and inflammation of the respiratory tract.

On Tuesday, Dr. Harley Estrin, director of student health and counseling at Cal State Fullerton, reported a 25% to 30% increase in the number of students with flu in recent weeks.

He added that there are indications that the toll has lessened in recent days, which also have been marked by unusually warm weather.

“We can’t give you exact statistics, but the increase . . . of patients with flu-like symptoms has been quite noticeable,” Estrin said. “We’ve made a point of studying random specimens from the patients, and we’ve found that it is definitely influenza, not just some other types of respiratory virus.”

Estrin said the university’s laboratory tests determined that the culprit is “Type A strain--not a new strain” of influenza.

Because the common vaccine for influenza covers the Type A strain, Estrin said, “this is therefore a good argument for high-risk persons who haven’t already had a current flu vaccination to get one.”

The elderly, who can die from complications of an influenza attack, are among those considered “high risk” for the ailment.

Earlier this month, Prendergast confirmed that a strain of Influenza A had struck Orange County nursing homes, causing the death of eight residents in Fullerton.

On Tuesday, he said his office has now checked about 13 other nursing homes, in scattered parts of Orange County, and found “respiratory ailments that we suspect are flu.” Final determination cannot be made until more tests are completed, he said. He estimated that about four other deaths have occurred since the eight in Fullerton.

Prendergst said the spread of flu in the schools is consistent with what his office has found about the current outbreak in Orange County. “It’s widespread, and there are a lot of people who have it, some of which we don’t know about because they’re not in clusters, such as nursing homes or schools.”

Public health officials say students usually reflect illnesses that are prevailing in adults. In many cases, schools can hasten the spread of a contagious disease because they bring so many diverse people together in close quarters for long periods of time. School officials on Tuesday said they are thus not surprised that flu spread so rapidly among teachers, staff and students in recent weeks.

What did surprise many school officials was the severity of the outbreak.

Josie Cabiglio, public information officer for Orange Unified School District, said current flu victims, including teachers, often were forced to remain out of school for up to two weeks.

Lori Cintron, a personnel technician in Orange Unified, added: “Often (flu-stricken) teachers will think they’re getting better after a few days (at home), and they’ll come back then have to go out again for five more days (with a relapse). Some have been out for two weeks.”

Cabiglio said the school district started noticing the upswing in flu-like illnesses in December. “It’s slacked off in the last two days,” she said, but the ravages of the ailment are still being felt. “A few of the (flu) cases have ended up in pneumonia, and some are requiring hospitalization,” she added.

In Santa Ana Unified, public information officer Diane Thomas reported a sharp increase in the number of ill teachers, with most of the ailments attributed to flu.

“We usually have about 90 substitute teachers a day throughout our district, but in recent weeks, it’s been running up to 150 subs,” Thomas said. She added that the big school district had felt the brunt of flu mainly in the past three weeks.

While exact figures were unavailable, Thomas said student absences because of illness have been on the upswing. “There’s no dramatic increase,” she said, but “we know absences (due to flu) have been up.”

In south Orange County’s Capistrano Unified School District, Jacqueline Cerra, community relations officer, said flu also had swept through those schools.

“There’s been lots of flu--sore throats and coughs--for weeks,” she said. As in the other school districts, Capistrano Unified had no statistics immediately available on the numbers of students and teachers stricken with flu.

The National Centers for Disease Control reported earlier this month that outbreaks of Type A influenza had been confirmed in 25 states, including California.