Stomach bug hits 23 teachers at girls school

MORE than 20 teachers have been struck down by a stomach bug at a girls’ school in Naas, Co Kildare.

St Mary’s College is the second school in the town to be hit by an infection in the last week. A small number of pupils has also been affected.

Many of those affected have been violently ill, with symptoms of vomiting and diarrhoea. “The health board advised us it is not dangerous but highly contagious,” said principal Marie O’Neill. “There are people violently ill, nothing serious, but very unpleasant. The severity varies, some are worse than others,” she said.

The bug is not related to the outbreak of a flu-like infection in a nearby boys’ school, St Corbin’s CBS, a week ago.

Ms O’Neill said 23 teachers out of a total teaching staff of 57 are sick and that they had to send four years home due to the staff shortage.

“We sent home three years - second, fourth and fifth years - on Thursday and told first years not to come in on Friday. That’s because we just didn’t have the staff to manage them. We kept on the third and sixth years.”

Ms O’Neill said the bug manifested itself on Tuesday, when one teacher became sick.

“We had one teacher sick on Wednesday. Then later on Wednesday night most of the rest became sick, but we didn’t know about this until Thursday. On Thursday one more teacher got sick,” she said.

She said she did not know how many of the 800 pupils at the school have been infected.

“We do have a number sick, a small number. It’s difficult to know how many.”

She said there was a high abstention rate yesterday. “We don’t know if people are sick or stayed out as a precaution.” Ms O’Neill said the bug was not the same as the flu-type virus that hit CBS.

The Eastern Regional Health Authority (ERHA) said the bug at St Mary’s was a gastrointestinal infection.

“It is not related in any way to the infection at CBS, which was a respiratory infection,” said a spokeswoman.

She said experts from the ERHA Department of Public Health and environmental health officers attached to the South Western Area Health Board were examining the cause of the outbreak.

The initial indications suggest the cause may be food-related.

Ms O’Neill said there was an in-service training day for teachers on Tuesday, when no pupils were attending.

This could explain why the vast bulk of those infected are teachers.

However, Ms O’Neill said the first teacher infected had symptoms before Tuesday. Those infected have been told by the health board to stay at home for 48 hours after they are free of all symptoms before returning to work.

“We expect it will have run its course on Monday and that we would be back to normal then. That’s the time we’ve said to students,” said Ms O’Neill.