Viral illness slows at Brown

About 30 students were absent Monday at Margaret R. Brown Elementary School after an outbreak of a gastrointestinal illness hit the school late last week.

“Things are going a lot better today,” Principal Kathy Ross said Monday. “We’re not quite at normal, but we’re pretty close.”

The illness appeared late Thursday, Ross said, when the school sent 20 students home.

“We were hit hard at the end of the day,” she said.

On Friday, the school had around 50 students absent, many of whom reported symptoms of vomiting and diarrhea. One teacher was sick.

“We’re still sending some home,” Ross said Monday afternoon.

Custodians worked over the weekend to clean surfaces and classrooms to help stop the illness from spreading. 

“They were sanitizing and sterilizing everything they could get their hands on,” Ross said.

Students were being told to wash their hands often throughout the day or use hand sanitizer. 

School and health officials suspect the cause of the illness is norovirus, which the Indiana State Health Department confirmed as what made more than 100 students sick at Seymour Middle School Sixth Grade Center earlier this month.

Ross said the school is working with a state epidemiologist to confirm that the illness affecting Brown students is norovirus, which can cause gastroenteritis, a highly contagious illness involving inflammation of the stomach and intestines.

Paul Ramsey, an environmentalist with Jackson County Health Department, said one way the illness could have spread from the Sixth Grade Center to Brown is through family contact between siblings.

“That’s our assumption right now,” he said Sunday.

It is unknown how the virus originated.

After little more than a week from when the illness first showed up, the Sixth Grade Center is “all better,” Vice Principal Becky Davis said Monday.

“We had eight students absent today and only a couple have said they have it,” she said.

The school continues to take precautions to keep students and staff healthy and protected from getting the illness.

“We are still using bleach and taking the recommended precautions,” Davis said. “Students are washing their hands several times throughout the day and using sanitizer.”

Superintendent Teran Armstrong said Monday administrators and staff are keeping a vigilant watch on the situation, but so far she hasn’t been made aware of the illness appearing in other buildings. 

“But I expect it,” she said.

Precautions

Students are being urged to wash their hands often in light of a virus causing gastroenteritis at two city schools