An increased number of chicken pox cases at Ecole Olds Elementary School earlier in January is no longer a concern to health officials or administrators at the school.
Four to five cases of the infection were seen at the school but administrators worked with the Olds Community Health Centre to contain its spread, said Debbie Thompson, principal of OES. Only three classes were affected.
“It was contained in a select number of classrooms that seemed to get the chicken pox and so the health unit just asked that we … send a letter home to those (parents),” she said, noting that the students who were infected had not been immunized.
The letter to parents of students in those classes went out on Jan. 19.
A public health nurse with the community health centre confirmed last week that no new cases had been reported to the centre in two weeks.
Thompson said the school got excellent cooperation from parents.
Dr. Deena Inshaw, one of the medical officers of health for the central zone with Alberta Health Services, said because the provincial government introduced a vaccination program in 2001, chicken pox isn't as prevalent as in past years.
Making it even more challenging from a public health point of view, there are other viruses such as the hand, foot and mouth virus, that produce blisters similar to chicken pox and make it difficult to say, without testing samples, which condition an individual has.
Usually several thousand cases of chicken pox are still reported in Alberta even with the vaccine. Inshaw explained that the vaccine is not effective 100 per cent of the time. A single dose of the vaccine protects against the disease 80 per cent of the time.
“In a couple of the cases that we've seen recently, the only way we were able to tell between the two (infections) is by taking a sample from one of the blisters and sending it to the lab,” she said.
In the letter that was sent home to parents, AHS emphasized the importance of reporting cases to the community health centre. Inshaw said AHS wants to know how many cases are in the community to protect people at higher risk for developing complications. The agency also wants to know the number of cases so it can better track the efficacy rate of the vaccination program.
“It's helpful for us to know how well the vaccine program is working. It's helpful for us to know because there's certain people that if they're exposed to chicken pox (pregnant women, newborns and those with depressed immune systems) are at high risk of having a very severe disease,” she said.
While most chicken pox is relatively minor with blistering developing and then abating over time, in people with depressed immune systems, pneumonia can develop as well as scarring inside the body on lungs, or even brain inflammation.
"It was contained in a select number of classrooms ...and so the health unit just asked that we ... send a letter home to those (parents)."Debbie Thompson, principal, Olds Elementary School
