The number of Ottawa schools with suspected H1N1 flu cases has increased to 29. However, according to a report in Ottawa Citizen, the city’s four school boards — with more than 120,000 students on their rolls — have no plan of their own to respond to a flu pandemic.
The boards are intending to rely on the city’s pandemic plan in case disaster strikes. It is worth mentioning here that the plan specifically asks individual groups and agencies to draw up their own complementary plans.
“Every organization, agency, or group needs to create a pandemic plan that considers the impact of an influenza pandemic on its organization,” the city plan says under a section titled “Organization-Specific Pandemic Plans.”
Sherry Nigro, the manager responsible for pandemic planning at Ottawa Public Health, said Friday that “evidence we have today is that 29 schools have been affected by the H1N1 virus since we became aware of it.” Nigro also said the virus is now spreading here and officials aren’t able to trace it to another infected person, a development British experts, who have noted the trend in their country, say is a sign of an impending pandemic.
There has been at least 37 confirmed cases of the H1N1 virus in Ottawa. 17 cases have been found among children, including two babies and one child who were hospitalized within the last two weeks.
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