Don’t panic, but when you wash your hands with soap and water, sing the Happy Birthday song twice. That’ll ensure you wash for at least 20 seconds.
That was one of the standard hygiene precautions — along with kids staying home if they’re sick; disinfecting door knobs, toys, and other often touched surfaces; and avoiding sharing utensils with the ill — that school, hospital, and city health officials reminded kids and families about as flu season approaches.
To make the point, they convened a press conference Monday morning at the science-themed Mauro-Sheridan Interdistrict Magnet School, where school nurse Maria DiMonaco demonstrated the happy birthday handwashing (in the video.)
Director of School Nursing Ann Somsel and city acting health chief Paul Kowalski also demonstrated another cool-looking precaution: If you don’t have a tissue nearby, sneeze into the crook of your elbow.
At the center of the press conference was vigorous but please-don’t‑panic concern occasioned by a newish organism, Enterovirus68. It has infected 150 kids in at least 22 states, according to U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, one of the several speakers at the event.
Click here for a list of normal precautions to take as well as a profile of the virus, also referred to as EnterovirusD68, and how it’s spread — basically like a flu through saliva, nasal mucus. The way it’s treated is like a common cold, but with, officials warned, never giving aspirin children.
That profile, along with other prevention and treatment info, will also be on the city’s health department site by Tuesday, said the department’s acting chief, Paul Kowalski.
“We don’t have any confirmed cases in the New Haven Public Schools, and we want to keep it that way,” said Schools Superintendent Garth Harries.
Officials said one case has been addressed in Connecticut, with that person already treated and since released from Yale-New Haven Hospital.
The people whom the virus tends to makes sicker are those with asthma, because Enterovirus68 seems to affect the lungs and respiratory system, said Paul Aronson (pictured with Superintendent Harries), chief of Yale-New Haven Children’s Hospital’s of pediatric emergency medicine.
That respiratory focus makes it atypical of viruses of its type. That, along with the fact that the virus, although known for 50 years, is an unusual one, are among the reasons the national Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is tracking, Aronson added.
Officials at Mauro-Sheridan and other schools are sending out bulletins by print and email to kids’ families and are making sure that janitorial staff sanitize cafeteria tables, bathrooms, and commonly touched surfaces.
Those would be practices the schools always engages in, but with a heightened sense during the flu season, Harries said.
At Mauro-Sheridan Nurse DiMonaco reported, “Kids are the same as always this year. I haven’t sent anyone home with a high fever.”
DeLauro was at pains to, as she put it, “connect the dots” between parents’ ability to properly care for their kids and issues like parental sick leave and access to good health care and good nutrition. “If parents do not have paid sick leave — almost half those who work in the private sector [do not] — they can’t stay home with a sick kid,” she said.
Harries and DeLauro.
Kids with asthma, the most vulnerable to Enterovirus68, need to have inhalers always at hand. DeLauro pointed out that two are needed, one for school and one for home, “but the price has doubled. These pieces [of overall kid health] do not exist in a vacuum; make the connections, and keep them healthy,” she said.
DiMonaco is one of 31 school nurses serving at 48 of the city’s schools. She’s lucky enough to be at Mauro-Sheridan five days a week — in part because some of that school’s kids require a regular presence for skilled care. Many other nurses rotate.
There are also 17 school-based health centers, including one at Mauro-Sheridan. They are run in a partnership among the state’s health department, the city Board of Ed, and a collaborating health institution in town, in Mauro-Sheridan’s case Yale-New Haven Hospital.
Enterovirus68 or not, “we need more nurses,” said Somsel.
