Illness, predominantly influenza, has hit Lincoln County, with many schools reporting a jump in absences in the week of Jan. 20 through 24.
According to Viral View, a website by the Oklahoma Department of Health that tracks three major respiratory illnesses and provides updates on Thursdays, the state is currently in the high risk category for influenza, and it’s widespread, with cases increasing.
Oklahoma is above baseline for influenza cases as of the week ended Jan. 18, with 25.2 percent of influenza tests returning positive. In Region 6, which includes Lincoln, Pottawatomie, Cleveland, McClain, Canadian and Logan counties, out of 1988 tests performed during the same period, 25.1 percent came back positive.
Davenport Public Schools went virtual on Monday and Tuesday. Superintendent Danny Acord said they tried to have school on Tuesday, but two cafeteria workers got sick on Monday, and they still had several teachers who weren’t sure if they would be better. Most of the cases have been Type A Flu, but he said a stomach bug has been making the rounds as well.
“I don’t really know how this compares to last year, but the combination of kids and teachers that have been sick the last week is as bad as I can remember,” Acord said. “Most of our teachers will come to work even when sick if they aren’t running a fever, but we didn’t have enough teachers, cafeteria workers, or subs to even try to be creative with our schedule!”
Chandler Superintendent Scott Baade said the school district is doing much better this week, though schoolwide, they were at 21 percent absences last week. For comparison, this time last year, they were at 11 percent.
They were monitoring it, and Baade said if attendance had still been down on Monday, they would have had to consider doing individual or virtual study. However, more students were back in school after the weekend.
At Stroud Public Schools, Superintendent Joe Van Tuyl said the elementary school rebounded on Monday after more absences on Thursday and Friday last week. Parkview had 13.2 percent absent. The middle school and high school were higher at almost 50 percent and about 24 percent, respectively.
“The flu is really tough to have, but it’s not untypical to have a period of time and in your area—state in this case—that you have about a two-week period where you have a spike in those cases,” he said. “This is just, unfortunately, these aren’t new things for us. These are things that we deal with on a year-to-year basis. And it’s that time again.”
He added that, hopefully, people are practicing good distancing and watching their coughs and sneezes, as well as minimizing contact in larger groups.
“I mean, there’s some common sense things that you can kind of do that we didn’t pay as much attention to before COVID, that we started to pay a whole lot more attention to during that period of time. And those things are effective.,” he said.