Health & Wellness: Monitoring the Coronavirus (2/12/2020)
Dear Rivers families,
While cold and flu season is never easy, this year it has been made a little more stressful with the emergence of the coronavirus. As you know, the virus originated in Wuhan in the Chinese province of Hubei and has begun to spread outward. Fortunately, it does not yet represent a significant threat to those of us in the U.S., but we want you to know that we are taking preliminary steps to prepare ourselves should the situation become more dangerous.
We have been in touch with our local health department to seek their advice, and we are diligently following news updates and guidelines provided by The Centers for Disease Control and the World Health Organization. We have also assembled a team of people here on campus who are monitoring the situation and discussing what policies and preventive measures we might need to take as we think about things like campus visitors and travel-abroad programs. We also plan to talk to our students to make sure they are able to separate fact from fiction during this time when information about the virus is still evolving.
One of our main goals will be to ease concerns and prevent the spread of hype and hysteria. At this point, health officials are suggesting there is little we need to do beyond diligently practicing the kind of habits we would normally take to prevent the spread of colds and flu. Our School Nurse Claudia Silva outlined these preventive practices in this email she sent out a couple weeks ago. These habits include washing your hands often, coughing into your sleeve, avoiding sharing water bottles and utensils with others, and staying home when you are sick. The coronavirus notwithstanding, this is proving to be a tough flu season, and the more we can keep the flu isolated away from campus, the better for all of us. If your child does get sick, we ask that you please notify the school nurse so that we can better monitor the health of our student body.
In addition, if you plan to travel outside the country, you’ll want to check the travel advisories provided by the US. Department of State and follow whatever recommendations they may have. If you are entertaining visitors from outside the country, you’ll want to make yourself aware of what exposure they may have had to areas where the coronavirus is active.
Please know that we will continue to monitor the information coming from the CDC and local health authorities, and we will implement additional precautionary measures as warranted by changing conditions.
As always, please feel free to contact either me or Ms. Silva if you have questions or concerns.
Thank you,
Ned Parsons
Head of School
Claudia Silva, BSN, RN
School Nurse
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