Spike in flu cases prompts closure of Newark elementary school Friday

The rapid increase in flu cases in Licking County during the past week resulted in closure of a Newark elementary school on Friday, Feb. 7.

Nearly a third of the 400 students at Carson Elementary School on East Main Street were absent on Thursday due to illness.

“If we see absenteeism of 20% or more, we start to look at it,” Licking County Health Commissioner Chad Brown said on Friday. “It was over 30% at Carson Elementary yesterday, and they were still sending kids home due to illness.”

He said cases of influenza A spiked across the county in recent weeks.

“Last week, we had 576 cases of influenza A reported,” Brown said about Licking County. “That well exceeded our threshold,” he said.

Typically, health officials would expect to see an average of 86 cases in the last week of January, so 576 cases are “much higher than we’d normally see,” Brown said.

A spike in cases is happening across Ohio and many other states, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention website, which says flu cases were up almost 32% nationally over the week before, and 48,661 people were admitted to hospitals nationally for flu-related illness in the week that ended with Feb. 1.

The Ohio Department of Health reports 1,384 confirmed influenza-associated hospitalizations last week – an increase of almost 91% over the previous week. And 291 of those hospitalizations were in central Ohio. A total of 4,660 influenza-related hospitalizations have been reported in Ohio so far in the 2024-25 flu season, including 98 in Licking County.

Brown said he and Newark City Schools Superintendent David L. Lewis conferred and decided to close Carson Elementary for a long weekend for a deep cleaning of the building and so that students wouldn’t be congregating and potentially spreading the illness.

A notice posted Feb. 6 on the school’s Facebook page said that “all healthy staff members will be reporting to school tomorrow. We hope this extra day allows for students and families to get healthy.”

Brown said the health department has seen a slight increase in COVID cases, and he said there’s no way to know the number of Respiratory Syncytial Virus (RSV) infections because there’s no requirement for health-care providers to report it.

“Influenza is the main illness right now,” he said, advising that “If you’re sick, stay home” and see a doctor.

“That’s the biggest thing we can say: If you’re sick, you should stay at home for at least 24 hours after having no fever. And good handwashing. Hand hygiene is the tried-and-true way to reduce the spread.”

The Ohio Department of Health also recommends a flu vaccination for those who have not had one yet this season.

In a letter to Carson Elementary families, Brown said the typical symptoms of the flu are fever, muscle aches, sore throat, cough, headache and a runny or stuffy nose. He said flu viruses are transmitted from person to person through droplets spread through coughs or sneezes, or direct contact with nasal secretions from an infected person.

Alan Miller writes for TheReportingProject.org, the nonprofit news organization of Denison University’s Journalism program, which is supported by generous donations from readers. Sign up for The Reporting Project newsletter here.