Winter bugs are out of control these days, aren't they?

[RogGestYeGerryMentlemen]

What on earth is going on? Primary schools local to me have had to close due to the d&v bug making the rounds. In one school, almost three quarters of students were absent. People seem to be catching it just by looking at each other, and it seems to be a particularly severe one, with people getting dehydrated as they are vomiting constantly and are unable to keep anything down.

I don't remember anything like this when I was a child. Yes you would get a bug doing the rounds, but you'd have a few years of catching everything when you started school, then it would ease off by age 8 or so.... I didn't catch a vomiting bug from I was 8 until I was about 15! Not to say I wasn't off sick for other reasons, but these vomiting bugs weren't the inevitable yearly event they are now.

My mum was a nurse for years, she reckons it's using antibac/disinfectant over soap and water - she says when she started her nursing training, they would obviously disinfectant certain things, but everything else would be given a good regular scrub down with soap and roasting hot water, and they had a massive barrel of rock salt which they'd scoop out and put in patient's baths, and she said wound infections weren't anything like now, and MRSA was unheard of.

I've actually changed this summer from antibac sprays to the more old fashioned cleaners like Stardrops and Vim, and bar soap instead of the dettol stuff, and touch wood we haven't had anything yet

It is a sickness bug, V but not always accompanied by the D, hitting here, rather than colds. So the flu vaccine - which most of the children had earlier this Autumn, and I had my own a while back - has been irrelevant to what's hitting our school.

Part of the problem at our school is kids that are sent back in the day after going home vomiting, I don’t know what the school can realistically do about that but I’d be refusing to have them in the class.

We do send them home if we know they've been sick at school within the 48 hours. But after weekends, or after a couple of days off we have to trust parents.

And yes, we do use antibac gel at the moment. But that is in addition to soap and water in the classrooms and in the toilets.

This year does seem particularly bad where I am. We’ve had 2 local secondary schools close for 2 days for deep cleans. The primary school my 4 dc attend has had at least 3-5 pupils per class off each day with it since they went back after half term & I know schools my friends dc attend have been very similar too.

It's because the weather tends to be mild and damp. There's no frost to kill the bugs.

My youngest two are in one of the ten schools in NI which was closed for deep cleaning. They were already off anyway, not with noro, but with the other horrid sore throat, massive fever, chills, awful cough virus. I have heard of 3 more children who have come down with noro this weekend alone, and another 2 who have come down with the other virus yesterday so it isn’t gone yet. My two won’t be back in until they are not only healthy but also absolutely ready to learn - just getting through the day isn’t good enough.

The principal of one

I don't remember what hygiene was like at schools when we were young but the hygiene in my children's school leaves a lot to be desired.

At least when i was at school, we had soap in the toilet hand basins. We send our son with a small hand gel because he says there's no soap in the loos. When we've been to meetings/parents evenings, plays etc., we've noticed the same - no bars of soap or dispensers in the toilets. No wonder all manner of viruses etc go round so quickly if they don't even do something so basic as providing a way of people washing their hands after going to the loo!

Some schools do init on hand washing before food - lunch and snack time. We do - infant school. The children are always supervised washing their hands, soap and water, before lunch. The teachers direct everyone to wash their hands with soap and water before snack time too. We do also have the antibac foam/gels in classrooms too - mainly for when dealing with medical issues, but at the moment also being used after hand washing to try and lessen the risk.

The caretakers are using a range of cleaning products for cleaning vomit, etc and doing general cleans. And we have been cleaning everything way more thoroughly including computers, iPads, etc.

Posted too soon...

The principal of one of the badly affected schools has come out and said that they have had kids in who they know have been sick the day before but they can’t accuse the parents of being liars so they have to keep them in - there is nothing they can do. I get that people don’t want to be taking time off work but it makes me so mad.

I do feel for the teachers and for the staff making these decisions.

The schools also have to give up one of their exceptional closures later in the year if they’ve closed. They get 5 a year, and can take them all or can take less if they want. Most schools (inc ours) will have planned their exceptional closures for the year already, so if they have booked in the max of 5 (which most will have done) then they have to make up the extra one they’ve taken by taking away a later one. This affects staff training and planning so it’s rubbish for them too. (Although whether the EA actually checks up on that and does anything about it I don’t know£

I'm not convinced that hygiene was much better when I was at school in the 80s. I remember on a fairly frequent basis there being big piles of vomit on the floor at primary school, covered with sawdust, waiting to be cleaned up. There often seemed to be a bit of a wait for cleaning. It is a particularly vivid memory of mine, as when I was about 5 I tried to jump over one of these piles in the corridor, misjudged it, and fell into it

I'm sure there must be something in that blood type or genetic disposition to certain types of illness: I've never ever had a d&v illness in my life and neither has ds (18). I've had food poisoning once. We're both really prone to colds and similar viruses though.

Don't think we've got noro going round around here but tonnes and tonnes of teachers and kids off in mine and other local schools with flu type viruses - definitely worse than for years.

I'm definitely noticing this. The last couple of winters have been particularly bad.

DC's school puts a lot of pressure on to keep sending children in with minor things like snotty noses and a bit of a temperature, so attendance figures look good. Then on the other side of it, parents can't take time off work anyway because of pressure from HR, so are sending DC back early from sickness bugs.

People don't seem to take time to rest when they're ill, ie, stay home out of the way and stop spreading their germs around.

Everywhere is over-heated too, every shop and office I go in has the heating on full blast, warming up germs nicely.

Also, personal hygiene seems to be lost on some people. Sneezing and coughing, then fingering all the fruit and veg in the supermarket for example.

I'm convinced touch screens has a lot to do with this too though. You wash your hands, then come back and pick up a phone or an iPad that's covered in germs...

I'm convinced touch screens has a lot to do with this too though. You wash your hands, then come back and pick up a phone or an iPad that's covered in germs...

I can barely watch in McDonalds when kids are playing with the touchscreens in the kiddy area and then using the same fingers to pick up their chips etc. We never let our son use them - can't think of anything more unhygenic. We always go to the loo to wash our hands after we've ordered via the touch screens - just enough time between ordering and the food being ready to collect. Never yet seen their cleaners wiping down the screens.

The DCs' school is one of the ones closed in Yorkshire, and I know of at least three others. The issue is that there are two bugs going around, as a PP said: one vomiting bug and one severe cold, and the combination is too much for the schools. DD has had the cold but fingers crossed we've avoided the sickness bug.

Its rife here too one school closed and lots off at my dd's school.

Because people like my ex sister in law are fucking stupid and takes her kids anywhere and everywhere even if they have vomited that morning. Cause her logic is if it doesn't hit both her kids it couldn't possibly be catching.

Upshot is my ex and his entire family are now very unwell. She's a fucking stupid cow and I hate her.

Me and the hubby had have 2 D&V bugs in as many months, one of which was severe!!! Sounded like a scene from The Exorcist! Weirdly enough our baby was fine so go figure! I hate this time of year, bring on Spring!

Not just schools.

I commute by train and, more than once, have had to avoid people actively spewing onto the platform and concourse, even within sight of a toilet.

I work in a hospital and require clean clothes every day. I had to spray myself with sterilising fluid twice so far.

This also happens around the hospital I work in.

Cancer, transplant and autoimmune patients are all at risk when am adult shows up sick.

Thanks for info re Sterizar. I’ve just ordered some from Amazon.

There's no way secondary schools could insist on handwashing before lunch though. 1000+ students can't all go and wash their hands at once and it would be impossible to implement with them all coming out of different classrooms!

We get colds in my house but never stomach bugs, not since my 11 and 14yo were tiny. No antibac spray here, and reasonably slack cleaning-wise. I'm sure it gives us stronger constitutions!

Ok I've just checked with the WhatsApp group for mums of kids at our school and apparently they do wash their hands before lunchtime here (phew!). It's interesting pp saying about frost killing the germs as my parents who are originally from India say the same thing. They also say the winters were a lot harsher/colder here in the 60's & 70's.

I don’t think hygiene helps and not do people follow the 48hrs quarantine advice either. Most of my colleagues come back to work the day after they had D and/or V and then inevitably someone else goes down with it and it continues. People still take their kids out and about when they’ve been ill the day before and not totally better

antibac/disinfectant over soap and water

hohum, tell that to the folk on the 'How often do you wipe your counters' thread where almost everyone uses antibac spray at least daily.

Carpets in schools And nurseries . Huge increase in the last 10 years (IKnow a supplier) yet rarely get professionally cleaned and kids spend a lot more time on the carpet than at their desks now
Only a local private school locally has a half termly deep clean of everything and if they have more than 3 cases of d and v they do a deep clean

Every single school within a 5mile radius has been shut for a deep clean by us in the last couple of weeks 😳 never had any of our schools shut before and dd is nearly 21. Public Health England have advised the schools to shut.
My youngest dd(14) has complained a few times that there isn't any soap in the toilets. We have to be very careful as dh is immune compromised due to chemo.