To think Nursery should have tried to contain chickenpox better?!

[Pengyquin]

No notice up in nursery that it was even doing the rounds. Found out on social media.

One member of staffs little girl was affected badly, and said member of staff came back to work 3 days later into a different room (my son's) Children from initial 'outbreak' room were taken to a new room (my son's) to save on staffing costs (I presume) at the end of one of the days.

Nursery have pretty much shrugged and seemingly are of the attitude, it's just chickenpox.

Well, it isn't 'just' chickenpox if you're pregnant and not immune or if you (or someone in your family) has a compromised immune system. Plus, a family friend of ours, her little girl died (aged 4) of chickenpox, so it's a matter close to the heart.

Just been informed that it is now in my son's room.

Or should I just accept it's one of those things and highly likely that we will get it.

I just think they should have tried to contain it in the one room. Not mix kids from room to room. The worker is probably irrelevent - I don't think you can pass on cp just because you've been caring for someone who has it?

I'm probably just really annoyed because we have a holiday booked next week that I can see being cancelled now!

Because the incubation period is 1 to 3 weeks. People are mixing it up with the time when the person is contagious (from a couple of days before the spots appear until the last one crusts over).

It's just the incubation period that is 2- 3 weeks, not the contagious period.

X-post with rubbish

Winter is chicken pox season. Not much you can do. It's generally a short lived illness with no complications so I disagree with PP - I think we massively overreact to chicken pox as we no longer have any genuinely concerning childhood diseases to worry about.

So a bad case of CP is not as bad as measles? Is that what you mean hairy?

I would disagree. Both have the potential to be nasty and fatal.

incubation....time from exposure to having active symptoms is up to 21 days,

although ds1 held it off another week! he was due a party and dd had it, we informed everyone we were poxridden, but that the party was outwith dd being infectious, but that ds2/ds1 were pox pending

he got it a few days after his party but not a single guest did.

AND is it not a Notifiable Disease anymore???...I had to keep phoning the surgery as they all contracted it. So surely nursery have some obligation to mention it?

Chickenpox in the United Kingdom, where vaccination is not generally undertaken, has had a stable epidemiology for decades and is a routine childhood illness.
Because of vaccination, chickenpox is now a rarity in the USA. However, in the UK vaccination is not done because introduction of a routine childhood vaccination might drive up the age at which those who are non?immune get the illness (chickenpox tends to be more severe the older you are), and the incidence of shingles may increase.
The United Kingdom is waiting to see what happens in countries where vaccination is routine.
That is why we don't vaccinate in the UK currently and CP in littlies is nowhere near as severe as CP in older people, or indeed shingles in older people.

Of course they don't, which is why they soon realise that kids in childcare get things like chickenpox.

I could be completely wrong, but I thought the reason we didn't Vax against CP, was that there was a body of evidence to say that the vaccine wears off after around 10 years or so?

I can't recall where I read it, but I thought there was concern that this would then push the average age of infection into the mid-late teens or older, when it has the potential to be a much more dangerous illness globally, and would in any case have potential social and economic consequences re missed exams/school etc.

You could, in theory, re-Vax at that point, catching classes at school, but then you push it into the late twenties, when it's definitely a riskier illness and also key period for pregnancy. So you'd then have to jab again, and again.

Which, frankly, would cost a fortune and actually, just wouldn't happen ... because people just don't stay on top of vaccinations out of childhood. Look at the uptake for flu year on year.

If poeple what their children 'safe' from this illness, then we need to start an eradication program, as we did with small pox, and remove CP from the population altogether.

However, that that requires a long-term vaccination program highly structured and well-adhered to, with a high population uptake. Good luck with that, when we can't even get people to maintain herd immunity for the much more dangerous illnesses already covered!

The nursery sounds a bit like elfrafra!

They could have put a sign up which is what mine does, apart from that there isn't much they can do.

DS school don't send a letter home to say they have chicken pox. They do let me know as DS is on steroids a lot so then I am aware.

I thought all vaccines wore off?

And no vaccine stops you getting it, just makes it less severe (this was my understanding)

I thought it was notifiable too, but maybe it isn't.

Chicken pox is ridiculously contagious, OP. It is extremely hard to contain it. You don't know they have it until the spots appear and they're contagious well before that even happens. Chances are most of the kids in that wee ones room will all have it now. A notice to say that there have been a couple of cases in the rooms never hurts, but there really isn't anything to be done about it. CP will have already crawled its way into their systems.

I wasn't aware that my dd had even been in contact with anyone who had it. The night we realised she had it, a friend of mine had picked dd up for me from school as I was running late from work. She has 3 boys of her own. I grabbed dd after she had been around the boys for what, maybe 10 minutes? They were just on their way home from school (different schools), out in the open. Later that night the spots on my dd suddenly appeared. Two weeks later to the day my friend text me to say all three of her boys had CP. There wasn't so much as a blemish on my dd when I collected her, so I had no idea she had it and neither did my friend. It's just the way it is, unfortunately.

In fairness to MagratsHair, a) she didn't make the decision to go on holiday, aged 4, with chicken pox and b) probably, when she was a child, chicken pox was not taken as seriously as it is now.

I took ds3 on holiday with chicken pox, when he was 5 weeks old - he is 17 now - and the possible risks to immuno-suppressed people, the elderly and babies genuinely was not known to the general public. None of the HCPs I saw be during the first five weeks of his life said anything to me about keeping him away from anyone.

In fact, it was his brother who got it first, and showed the first spots on ds3's first day, which the midwife and HV knew, and there was never any suggestion of trying to keep him away from me or the baby, or from any of the people who visited to see the new baby.

And when I was a qualifies theatre nurse, at the end if the 1980s, I got chicken pox from a child I baby-sat (and all I did was poke my head round the bedroom door for a minute, a few times, to check he was still asleep), and work were keen for me to come back to work before the end of the incubation period (as defined by the GP, at the time) - so they wanted me around unconscious patients with open wounds!

That tells you how much more lax the attitudes used to be!

DS1 skipped it when it went round his nursery the first time, then caught it the second time... when DS2 was a week old....

A combination of my immunity, and very strict segregation stopped DS2 from catching it - so it is possible to avoid!

Both DS's Nursery, and the school have always been very on the ball with notifications where I am. Chickenpox happens, but they really, really should let you know.

I think yanbu. DS currently has chickenpox, we are on day 3 and it's not fun to any of us. He goes to childminder and around 4 weeks ago one of the maindees picked it up from school, she was only in the same room as DS for around 20 min, a day before spots came out, but my cm notified me straight away. Why? So, that l can keep an eye on symptoms and let work know that it may be coming and l will need time off the office during busy period, so that they can plan for it. I never had chickenpox, so will have to wait and see if it's my time to have it in couple of weeks.

I also don't understand why there is no routine vaccination in the UK. I wanted to go down private route with Ds, but in my surgery you have to first set up gp appointment and then vaccination appointment, l simply run out of time to have it done following delayed mmr jab.

I red somewhere that as an adult if you were exposed to cp and get vaccinated within days chances are you won't get it. If pragnent you need to get antivirals from gp asap.

It's not JUST chickenpox, can be dangerous to same. Could as well say, don't vaccinate against rubella as it's much milder than co and doesn't leave scars.

You can't really contain chickenpox but they could have let parents know that they had had children off with it.

It is not a notifiable disease in England and Wales.

Be prepared to keep your child in perpetual seclusion if you want to avoid chicken pox. Not just now but right through infant, junior and secondary school. Oh and then as an adult as well.
It's not fun but it's better to have it at 3 than 8 or 12 or 16.....

DS1 had it at 5 and DS2 came down with it exactly 2 weeks to the day after his brother. We were on holiday.

CP has been round 4 times since dd has been in childcare (first nursery, then pre school 3 times over 2 years) she didn't get it once, my mum's never had it either I assume natural immunity. Thing is you can't control something like cp

I think they should have let you know. When DS was in primary I used to walk his friend back home with us sometimes to save his mum who lived next door from doing the trip with her premie baby. I was spitting feathers when the school didn't tell us about a chicken pox outbreak until half the class were off sick. Both boys had had chicken pox before, as had all the adults, so they wouldn't have brought it home - but if we'd known it would have been so easy for me to do the school run every day to save the baby from coming in and being coo'd over by a dozen germ-ridden five year olds.

Toddlers and primary children will get chicken pox, and quarantine within the school is almost pointless, but there are many situations where it's useful to know about an outbreak as soon as possible so you can take a view on exposure to vulnerable friends and relatives.

You can't contain it by room in a nursery setting. If you don't like the risk of chicken pox then don't use a nursery because yes you are paying for them to get ill.
My youngest daughter was the index case at her nursery when she had it. She caught it from another child whose rather daft parent hadn't realised what he had. I knew nothing about her exposure and wouldn't have pulled her from nursery 'just in case' anyway. It's endemic in the winter and you can't predict when a child will catch it. She made it through 2 winters without catching it (extended breastfeeding possibly helped? but then again her sister caught it as a young baby exclusively breastfed!) She gave it to 36 kids. Thank goodness none had compromised immune systems. This is exactly why we should vaccinate.

Closer to £75 for a CP jab in London (not sure where you are, sorry). Not saying you should get one - didn't bother for our kids and they lose effect after 10 years or so. Just throwing the option out there.

we are far too hysterical about chicken pox IMO. CP is a routine childhood illness from which very few children suffer adverse reactions. It is not comparible to measles for instance, neither is exposure to cp when pregnant comparible to rubella.

On googling this just four children have died from complications relating to chicken pox in the past five years.

While I wouldn't knowingly pass on cp to a child, it is far preferable that they catch it as children rather than as adults as the side effects can be much more serious as adults. There is already evidence that cp vaccine does not last and the result is that more adults will catch it meaning that more adults will become seriously ill whereas they would not have done had they just caught the virus as a child and gained life-long immunity. There is similar evidence re mumps vaccine fwiw with a higher proportion of students catching it now than was the case twenty years ago, and again, with higher levels of complication.

It's chicken pox, not smallpox