Swine flu spreads fast among school children in Jaipur

[Ronan Kelly]

Swine flu spreads fast among school children in Jaipur
STAFF WRITER 22:41 HRS IST
Jaipur, Nov 8 (PTI) Ten city schools were closed as swine flu showed signs of spreading fast among school children with 44 out of 52 positive cases registered today involving them even as the state government directed authorities to step up measures to check the rise of the pandemic among the young.

81 school children have tested positive for the virus in the city in three days, health officials here said.

State government again reviewed the situation and instructed all District Magistrates and Education Department officials to do the needful as per the demand of situation, they said.

A week-long holiday has been declared by the district administration in the ten city schools whose students have tested positive for the virus, Jaipur DM Kuldeep Ranka said.

Other schools are also being checked to find if there are any students showing symptoms of the pandemic, he said.
http://ptinews.com/news/367989_Swine-flu-spreads-fast-among-school-children-in-Jaipur

 

[Ronan Kelly]

Re: Swine flu spreads fast among school children in Jaipur

47 more Swine flu in Jaipur, 28 are kids
TNN 10 November 2009, 04:52am IST

JAIPUR: Swine flu cases kept piling up on Monday as well, with the district administration in a tizzy, trying its best to contain the spread of the
epidemic that seems to be affecting children the most.

On Monday, 52 more people tested positive for the H1N1 virus, of them 47 in Jaipur alone. Of the rest, three are from Jodhpur, and one each from Udaipur and Kota.

In Jaipur, again the highest number of those affected were children. With 28 kids testing positive on Monday, the number of children affected is nearly 130 in the city. Seven more schools have decided to close down.

They include Dolphin School (all 17 branches), Children?s Academy, India International School (closed till November 14), Central Academy, Marryland, St Anslem?s and American International. They will remain closed till next week. With this, 33 schools are now shut in the city.

The health department held a series of meetings through the day, discussing various developments and ways to make monitoring more effective. To make testing facilities available in rural areas, the government has approved collection, handling and transportation of H1N1 samples at 17 locations outside Jaipur. These include Sri Ganganagar, Bharatpur, Suratgarh, Bikaner, Udaipur, Hanumangarh, Kota and Ajmer.

Till now, the facilities were only available in the city. It has been decided that 32 new shops will be authorised to dispense Tamiflu across the state. These shops at major city hospitals will be open 24X7.

Health minister A A Khan visited isolation facilities at the SMS Hospital to take stock of the preparedness. At the newly established isolation ward, eight patients are undergoing treatment, and of them one is in ICU. The minister stressed that things are under control and that H1N1 was curable. ?People should not take it to be a fatal disease. It is very much curable and we will spare no effort in doing so,? he said.

Sensing panic and to ensure effective monitoring, the department from Monday started updating the latest count of those with swine flu across the state on the department?s portal. According to this, 168 samples were collected during the day. It further states that till now 252 people have tested positive for H1N1 in the state, and of them 17 have died.

Principal secretary, health, G S Sandhu told TOI that 360 beds have been reserved across the state for H1N1 patients. ?We have reserved 240 beds in government and 120 beds in private hospitals across the state. We have constituted five teams in the city to treat those who have come in contact with those affected and have advised other zones to follow the same,? he said.

Doctors working with H1N1 patients will be undergoing training to upgrade their skills. A team of 135 doctors working for critical care will be trained across the state. Rapid response teams are also being formed and all doctors at community health centres too are being trained to handle H1N1 cases. ?That apart, two doctors will be trained at the national level to supervise the situation,? Sandhu said.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...in-Jaipur-28-are-kids/articleshow/5214026.cms

 

[Ronan Kelly]

Re: Swine flu spreads fast among school children in Jaipur

Swine flu: 75 more in city test positive
TNN 13 November 2009, 02:54am IST

JAIPUR: As swine flu cases continue to swell in the city, even medicos are clueless about the ways and methods to control the pandemic in the coming
days.

On Thursday, the state reported 75 new cases, and all of them are in Jaipur. Among those tested positive, 47 are school children. The total number of patients in the state reached 410, including over 300 children.

Meanwhile, a woman died at SMS Hospital late on Wednesday though her test reports were yet to arrive. Health officials, on the other hand, maintained that the high incidence of the disease in the capital region was mainly due to high awareness and availability of test facilities. They said that the figures should not worry anybody as it will only help in better detection of the disease.

"It has been due to largescale screening and large number of people coming forward for testing that more H1N1 cases were being reported in the city each day," said principal secretary, health, G S Sandhu. Of the total 1,287 samples collected in the state, 1001 have been from Jaipur.

The proportion of positive cases compared to the number of samples collected is also high in Jaipur. Among the 1,000 samples collected, 410 have been tested positive, a rate of 41% whereas of the 286 samples collected from the remaining divisions, only 45 cases (15%) have been confirmed positive so far.

The health department is now trying to further upgrade the facilities available in other cities of the state. On Thursday, the department authorized Super Religare Laboratories for collection, transportation and testing of swine flu samples from Alwar and Udaipur. The department is also planning to commence separate screening facilities at primary health centres (PHCs) in rural areas. Officials had also been instructed to collect the details of residence and work place of those tested positive to augment preventive measures.
Except Bharatpur, swine flu cases had been reported from all the other six divisions. Jaipur reported the maximum cases, followed 23 in Jodhpur, 11 in Kota, 5 in Udaipur, 3 in Bikaner and 3 in Ajmer.

It is believed that the disease might be be spreading in the rural areas but has not been diagnosed due to lack of awareness and availability of testing facilities. In Bharatpur division, no sample has been collected yet for testing. Hence it may be possible that the disease might be unreported in the region.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...in-city-test-positive/articleshow/5224642.cms

 

[Ronan Kelly]

Re: Swine flu spreads fast among school children in Jaipur

Many children test positive for swine flu in Pink City

STAFF WRITER 19:48 HRS IST
Jaipur, Nov 14 (PTI) Forty-eight children were among 75 persons who tested positive here today for swine flu.

"255 samples were collected today, out of which 75 persons including 48 children have tested positive," a health official said here tonight.

The deadly virus has claimed 21 lives so far in Rajasthan where 610 people have tested positive for the pandemic.
http://ptinews.com/news/377182_Many-children-test-positive-for-swine-flu-in-Pink-City

 

[Roehl_JC]

Re: Swine flu spreads fast among school children in Jaipur

JAIPUR: There is no slowing down of swine flu incidence in Rajasthan. On Saturday, 75 more cases were reported in the state, out of which 48 are children, most of them from Jaipur.

While 69 of those tested positive are from Jaipur, two belong to Ajmer, three are from Kota and 1 from Bikaner. Of the 610 cases reported in the state, 551 have been from Jaipur. The flu has so far claimed 9 lives in the city.

The district administration is now considering a proposal to extend the precautionary closure of schools for one more week. ?There were 35 schools where new cases have been reported. We are considering a proposal to extend the vacation at these schools by one more week,? said an official of district administration.

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...cases-48-are-children/articleshow/5231857.cms

 

[Ronan Kelly]

Re: Swine flu spreads fast among school children in Jaipur

Flu: 71 schools closed till Nov 21
TNN 16 November 2009, 06:09am IST

JAIPUR: The district administration on Sunday directed 71 educational institutions to extend their closure by another seven days as a preventive
measure against spread of swine flu. The list includes 63 schools and seven colleges in the state capital.

Over 300 students have been tested positive for H1N1 virus in the past two weeks. All the schools which have been asked to remain closed for another week have confirmed positive cases.

?We have decided to keep these schools closed till November 21,? district collector Kuldeep Ranka said. However, it came as a disappointment for some who had already announced reopening from Monday. K B Kain, principal, DPS said: ?I wish that the government would have told us a day in advance. This sudden decision will cause inconvenience to students, teachers and parents alike.? More than 50 students from neighbouring states and cities have arrived in the school hostel in order to attend classes from Monday, he said.

Meanwhile, many schools plan to take up the issue with the government. A principal with only one positive student in his school said: ?The child has now recovered and hence all should be allowed to attend school. How long can the schools remain closed??? The order has given rise to a debate whether closing down schools is a permanent solution to the issue or not. Some schools have described the decision to close down as ?uncalled for? which would help only to spread panic among the students.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...ls-closed-till-Nov-21/articleshow/5234183.cms

 

[Ronan Kelly]

Re: Swine flu spreads fast among school children in Jaipur

Early winter hols in Mayo, city schools
TNN 17 November 2009, 07:36am IST
JAIPUR/AJMER: On a day 49 persons tested positive for swine flu in Rajasthan, Mayo College Ajmer (both boys and girls) took the lead in announcing early winter vacations for two months. A few schools in Jaipur, including BVB Vidhyashram, MGD, SMS and Step by Step, also declared winter vacations till November 29. During the day, one person also died of swine flu in Jodhpur, taking the toll to 24 in the state.

Ten students of Mayo Girls? have come down with swine flu. In Rajasthan, so far 742 persons have tested positive, of them 644 are from Jaipur. A majority of them are children. Even on Monday, of the 39 who tested positive for H1N1 in Jaipur, 25 are children. Ten more schools, including Mayo, shut down on Monday, taking the number of schools in Rajasthan affected by swine flu to 81.

Hundreds of anxious parents rushed to Ajmer to bring back their children. This is for the first time that the elite residential school has declared such a long winter break, and so early. Such long holidays are bound to affect the academic schedule hard.

Sensing panic in Ajmer, where swine flu has only just started spreading, the district administration has ordered all schools within city limits to close down for the next five days. Ajmer district collector Rajesh Yadav said: ?Sensing the fear and considering the risk of the virus spreading, the district administration has decided to close down the schools for the next five days starting Tuesday.? He added that the closure period could be extended.

At Mayo Girls, every student is being screened by a special team of doctors. School principal Jamila Singh, however, claimed that ?things are under control?. But sources said such was the panic that students were not allowed to have dinner together and even visitors? entry on the premises was banned.

In Jaipur, while many schools have declared early winter holidays, DPS (Vidhyadhar Nagar) and Neerja Modi School have decided to keep their institutions open till November 24. Some schools claimed the ripple effects of swine flu will continue to affect the entire academic session.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...-in-Mayo-city-schools/articleshow/5238157.cms

 

[Ronan Kelly]

Re: Swine flu spreads fast among school children in Jaipur

Flu Spreads At Alarming Pace
TNN 18 November 2009, 07:52am IST
JAIPUR: A single day?s screening of flu suspects across Rajasthan has proved what most had been suspecting for long: that many more had been infected by H1N1 than had been reported.

Screening by doctors of 28,029 patients with flu symptoms at 713 centres across Rajasthan on November 16 showed that 3,911 (or 14% of those screened) had influenza, and of them 3,842 probably had swine flu. This was based on symptoms and not actual tests, whose reports would take some more time to come.

Compare this with the total confirmed cases so far: till Tuesday, 856 had tested positive. Whereas in just one day, almost four times that number ? 3,842 ? were detected with possible H1N1. Even allowing for a margin of error, this is a huge number, and only shows how alarmingly the virus has spread.

But there?s a silver lining. Of the 3,842 detected, 3,800 (99%) cases were in put in Category A, the mildest form of the disease. These people would not even need Tamiflu and would recover with standard flu drugs. But 40 (1.05%) were put in Category B, which would require Tamiflu, and 2 in the high-risk Category C, which requires immediate hospitalisation. (See box.)

?This data suggests that the situation is bad but not out of control. Effective management and planning can help us tackle the situation with fewer casualties. Most are preliminary cases and can be treated without Tamiflu and isolation as perceived,? a top health department official said. He added that even a healthy person might be carrying the virus within him or her, but it may not be active for a long time. ?All cases are not critical and people should understand that,? he added.

In Jaipur, the screening reports indicate that of the 2030 people screened on November 16, 158 (7.7%) showed symptoms of influenza. Further, the cases of category A were 156, indicating that they were preliminary cases and not fatal ones. There were just one case each of category B and C in the city on Monday, for which this data is available.
In the last couple of days, the health department has increased the number of screening centres across the state, taking the number up to 713. There are 59 such centres in Jaipur.
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/jaipur/Flu-Spreads-At-Alarming-Pace/articleshow/5241855.cms