School Absenteeism High as Cold and Flu Season Slams Area

The cold and flu season has hit Ventura County with a vengeance in the last week, the county’s top public health official said Tuesday.

School attendance records show that three times as many students are missing school due to colds than in normal times, said Dr. Lawrence E. Dodds, medical director of the county’s Public Health Services Department.

“Certainly colds have been going around, but it sounds like we’re getting more cases of influenza in the last week,” Dodds said. “It has raised its head in the community.”

The outbreak of colds and respiratory infections is in keeping with a seasonal pattern that usually begins two weeks before Christmas and lasts into February, Dodds said.

At Las Posas elementary school in Camarillo, 63 students out of 488 phoned in sick last Friday, while six of the school’s 18 teachers said they had some type of bug.

Similar absenteeism has not been reported in the workplace, but public health agencies are reporting a high number of patients being treated for colds.

According to health officials, one out of every three patients visiting large clinics in the county in the last week complained of flu-like symptoms, a 10% increase over last year.

The flu symptoms, different from cold symptoms in that they seem to affect the whole body, are characterized by an abrupt onset of coughing, sore throat, high fever and other symptoms, county immunization coordinator Sue Hyatt said.

She said the best way to avoid contracting the flu is to get a vaccination shot early, and to keep a distance from people who are already sick.

More than 16,500 immunizations were administered this year at 18 clinics countywide, about 1,500 more than last year, Hyatt said.

The increase in flu shots caused some officials to worry about vaccine shortages, but supplies appear to be adequate.

So far, there have been no known cases in Ventura County of type-A influenza, a disease that can be fatal for frail, elderly people or those with heart and lung ailments. However, several cases have been reported in Los Angeles County, Hyatt said.

In fact, federal health officials warned in October that this winter’s flu strains would be particularly widespread.

One of the highest absentee rates in county schools was reported at Ladera elementary school in Thousand Oaks, where on Monday 80 children called in sick and 15 more left school in the middle of the day, school secretary Marsha Garber said.

“We have six to eight cases of chickenpox too,” Garber said.

Ladera School has an enrollment of 589 students.

As the cold season nears its peak, emergency rooms are filling up with coughing and sneezing patients in search of treatment.

Dr. Ted M. Mandryk, a staff physician at the Ventura County Medical Center’s emergency room, said he has seen a 50% rise in the number of patients crowding into waiting rooms.

Bronchitis and gastrointestinal infections are the most common ailments, Mandryk said, and waits of up to four hours to see a physician are not unusual.

With all the emphasis on preventive medicine and vaccines, he said, there still is no sure way to prevent a cold.

“And we don’t have any cures,” Mandryk said.