In South Carolina, “there will be a massive attempt to use schools as vaccination centers,’’ said state Superintendent Jim Rex. He plans at least one vaccination clinic in each of the state’s 85 school districts.
South Dakota started offering free children’s vaccination against regular winter flu in 2007, and this year it plans to offer both kinds in many schools, said state Health Secretary Doneen Hollingsworth.
Now come the difficult details: figuring out all the logistics in giving squirmy youngsters a shot in the arm or a squirt in the nose.
That’s in addition to measures being taken to keep the swine flu virus from spreading inside schools and to keep sick kids at home.
Already, Lee County, Miss., schools have reported a few cases of swine flu the first week of school, and a Louisiana high school football team reported 20 players sick or recovering from it.
To make sure students wash their hands, Minneapolis schools have outfitted every restroom with tamperproof soap dispensers, so students don’t horse around with soap. And the district has a no-excuses policy to keep them filled. “It sounds so simple, but it works,’’ district emergency management director Craig Vana said.
Bismarck, N.D., is insisting that parents keep feverish children home. “We’re going to have to be a little firmer on that this year than in the past,’’ superintendent Paul Johnson said.
The goal is to keep schools open; federal officials said last week schools should close only as a last resort.
Some heavily populated states, such as California, Ohio, and Massachusetts, are focusing on those steps and not on vaccinations, because they don’t know how much vaccine the federal government will send or when it will arrive. Boston has decided against in-school vaccinations because an attempt at regular winter flu inoculations at a middle school last year flopped, and Dallas officials also have decided against school shots.
