CENTRAL JERSEY: Regional school district expects to inoculate for swine flu

By Matt Chiappardi, Staff Writer
   HIGHTSTOWN — As part of a nationwide effort to vaccinate as many children as possible against the H1N1/09 virus, the East Windsor Regional School District expects to inoculate its students and staff members who choose to do so.
   That arrangement is based on recommendations from the state Department of Health and Senior Services and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, according to district Superintendent Ron Bolandi.
   There are expected to be 45 million doses of the vaccination available nationwide in October, according to the CDC, and inoculations will be administered at the local school district on a voluntary basis, said Mr. Bolandi.
   The superintendent, along with a number of other school and health-care officials from across the state, learned about the latest recommendations to contain an outbreak of the virus — commonly called swine flu — at an all-day summit in South Brunswick on Aug. 25.
   Both entities also recommended closing schools if more than half the student or staff populations contract the disease, and coming up with a contingency plan if schools are closed for more than seven days.
   ”If (a pandemic) comes true, we’re going to have some issues we have to deal with,” Mr. Bolandi said.
   ”I’m leery of all the hype, but I’m willing to plan for it and I’m willing to take it seriously,” he added.
   The recommendations came on the heels of a dire advisory report from The President’s Council on Science and Technology released Aug. 7. The report claims that an outbreak of H1N1/09 influenza could make up to half of the country ill and kill up to 90,000 Americans.
   By contrast, regular seasonal influenza infects about 30 percent of the nation each year and kills between 30,000 and 40,000 people annually, according to the CDC.
   The way the plan in the district would work is that each student and staff member would be given a inoculation permission slip to fill out issued by the federal government, Mr. Bolandi said. Once district officials have determined how many people opt for the vaccination, it will schedule a number of days and times when school nurses and Department of Health personnel will administer them, he added.
   The vaccination is administered with two injections each taken 28 days apart, according to the CDC.
   While the superintendent said he intends to follow the state and federal recommendations, he said he is concerned that he hasn’t seen the permission slips and hasn’t been told if the district would be liable for any negative effect the vaccination may have.
   ”There’s going to have to be a hold-harmless clause,” Mr. Bolandi said. “There are always consequences for any medication you give anyone. If someone has a bad reaction, I don’t want the taxpayers of this community having to pay for a lawsuit.” .
   If absentees force the district to close schools for more than a week, Mr. Bolandi said instruction would be handled online.
   ”We have a very strong tech program, so we can do instruction through the Web and Internet. We’re working on ways for children who don’t have computers to borrow some we have here in the district,” he said.
   The CDC had recommended schools present instruction via webcast, but Mr. Bolandi said he rejected that idea because of “logistical issues.”
   ”The problem with that is trying to get all the kids together at home at the same time,” he said.
   The superintendent added that if closures occur in the early part of the school year, it would be an unusual situation that parents must prepare for.
   ”You rarely close school during the first three months of year. We don’t live in a hurricane area and don’t normally have snow days then,” he said.
   ”Parents need to be prepared to make arrangements if, in fact, their child is home and they have to go to work,” Mr. Bolandi added.
   The disease, believed to be a never-before seen strain of influenza, was first reported in the southern Mexican state of Veracruz in March. It quickly spread to the United States by April, to all six inhabited continents by May, and by June there were more cases in the United States than any other country in the world, according to the World Health Organization.
   The CDC reported about 26,000 cases in the United States, but estimated that more than 1 million people could have been infected with the virus. So far, 522 people in the United States have died from the disease, according to the CDC.