H1N1 Flu Information and Guidance for Child Care Providers
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provides the following guidance for child care providers:
- First and most importantly, remind parents and enforce policies for having ill children stay at home during their illness.
- Remind and inform workers not to come to work while ill.
- Both staff and students should stay home if they have symptoms of fever (over 100 degrees F) and cough or sore throat or runny nose or body aches. Ill persons should not return until 24 hours after they are free of fever without the use of fever-reducing medicines.
- Review your plans for responding to a pandemic and make sure they are up to date.
- Know local/state plans for child care in the event of a mild or severe pandemic.
- This information may be available from state or local health authorities, child care licensing agencies or resource and referral agencies.
- Review and implement CDC Guidelines and Recommendations for Preventing the Spread of Influenza (the Flu) in Child Care Settings: Guidance for Administrators, Care Providers, and Other Staff, (http://www.cdc.gov/flu/professionals/infectioncontrol/childcaresettings.htm)
- Make sure staff are familiar with the above guidelines and that they are being followed in your program. Remind child care staff to clean/disinfect frequently touched surfaces within the facility.
- Provide information to parents on steps that they could take to prevent flu. (See attached fact sheet that could be distributed to each parent or posted on a door to the facilities with providers calling attention to the posted fact sheet).
- Monitor the postings on the CDC web site about this virus to see if child care facilities should begin preparing for possible closure or changes in operation (www.cdc.gov).
- Child care and preschool programs can help protect the health of their staff and the children and families they serve by calling attention to the every day preventive actions that parents can initiate to protect their children. (Please consider posting or distributing the attached message in your child care facility).
- More information on preventing the spread of influenza can be found at: http://www.pandemicflu.gov/plan/school/preschool.html.
Visit the Metro Public Health Department’s website (www.health.nashville.gov) for the latest information or call our H1N1 flu information telephone line (615) 340-7775.