Norovirus spreads, another school district closes

Link

Embed

Copy and paste this HTML code into your webpage to embed.

EUREKA – The spread of highly contagious Norovirus has forced another school district to shut its doors. Eureka City Schools will close after student absences doubled overnight.
“The best interest of our students, staff and families is to go ahead and close our schools for Thursday and Friday of this week,” said Superintendent Fred Van Vleck.
Humboldt County Department of Public Health made the recommendation to close when only 80 percent of the district’s 3,700 students reported to school Wednesday.
The virus causes symptoms like nausea, fever and vomiting. While most recover in a few days, those who are infected often interact with others before symptoms manifest.
Van Vleck said the decision was hard not only because student groups must now cancel end of the year events but also because many families don’t have options for child care.
Administrators hope the extended holiday break will allow time to sanitize campuses and prevent further spread.
“We will have a couple of essential staff on our sites over the next couple of days and then we will have a full return of our normal staff resuming on the 27th. And that normal staff will be our custodial staff who will be doing very deep cleaning of our campuses following the recommended guidance to make sure we do a thorough job of preparing all of our campuses for the return of our students on January 8th.”
As always stay with News Channel 3 for updates as this story develops.