Flu Outbreak Closes Georgia School System Early for Holiday Break

The winter school break may be coming at a good time to slow the spread of influenza among Georgia children, but it didn’t come soon enough for one nearby school system, which couldn’t escape its fury.

With Georgia’s flu rate one of the highest in the nation, the Polk County School District was forced to close its 10 schools two days early for the holiday break because so many students and teachers were home sick. Polk County borders Paulding County to the west.

According to 11Alive, 1,300 of the system’s 7,800 students and 78 teachers out of 500 were out sick Tuesday.

The illnesses, and the speed at which it hit the county, prompted Polk Superintendent Dr. William Hunter to send kids home early on Wednesday, then canceled classes Thursday and Friday.

Hunter said the flu hit hard on Monday and got worse Tuesday.

“In fact, I had a lot of people tell me on Monday that they just were not going to be able to send their kids to school later in the week because they didn’t want their kids sick all during Christmas vacation,” Hunter told 11Alive. “So the decision was pretty easy to make.”

The 2014 flu season has hit the Peach State especially hard, according to the CDC, which said Georgia was one of four U.S. states with the highest increases in flu reports during the first week of December. Georgia is one of 14 states where the flu outbreak is considered to be widespread.

State Director of Health Protection Dr. J. Patrick O’Neal told WSB-TV flu activity in Georgia is already a 10 on a scale of 1 to 10.

“We started off fairly slow in Georgia, but in last two to three weeks we’ve seen a dramatic increase, in particularly in the last 7 to 10 days the numbers of cases have gone up tremendously,” O’Neal told the TV station Thursday.

The Georgia Department of Public Health said this season’s flu outbreak has been a nasty one, partly due to the vaccination available is not as effective on every strain. The department said around 90 percent of tested flu specimens were the more serious Influenza A (H3N2) strain. Also, half of the tested samples had mutated and didn’t match well with the vaccine produced for the 2014-15 season.

Still, health officials say a flu shot can still help.

In Paulding County, schools are in session through Friday, leading up to the holiday break. Students will return to classes Jan. 6. The school system shared this Flu Checklist on its website.

There have been five flu deaths this year in Georgia, WSB reported.

Also see

• WSB’s special flu section
• Patch Blogger: As cold weather arrives, so does flu season