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Published:
February 8, 2006
Staff
and pupils struck by flu bug in Burnham and Highbridge
More
than 500 children and staff have been struck down by a flu bug
in Burnham-On-Sea and Highbridge.
Hundreds
of pupils and teachers have phoned in sick over the last few days
after a major outbreak of influenza and respiratory illness.
More
than 20 primary and secondary schools across Somerset have been
struck by the bug, which has symptoms including vomiting, headaches
and flu-like sickness.
First
news about the bug was reported on Burnham-On-Sea.com's forums
at the end of January.
And
the problem has got worse since then - King Alfred School says
it had around 350 youngsters away sick every day last week, resulting
in around a quarter of the school's pupils being absent.
Talking
to Burnham-On-Sea.com on Wednesday (February 8th), headmaster
Dr Keith Diffey said: "We still have about 20 per cent of
pupils off, which is above the norm. Fortunately it's not been
massively disprutive."
"With
the half-term break coming next week, we hope that everyone will
be able to recover and will be brought fully under control."
Other
local schools affected include East Huntspill Primary, where almost
half of the children were unwell on several days and St Jospeh's
Primary School, where 10% of students were absent.
Also
affected were Berrow Primary School, where 40 children were absent;
Brent Knoll Primary School, where some classes had a third of
pupils missing; St John's Primary School, where 50 children were
absent on Friday 33 on Monday; St Andrew's Primary School, where
twice as many children as normal were away.
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