The Health Service Executive (HSE) has stressed that schools will remain open even if there are small numbers of swine flu cases.
Rather than closing the school, the students with symptoms will be sent home for seven days.
Dr Pat Doorley, national director of population health with the HSE, said it was only if significant numbers of children or teachers developed symptoms that schools would be closed.
He has said there was no reason even to keep children with underlying health conditions such as asthma out of school during the H1N1 pandemic.
School teachers have been urged to teach students to use tissues only once when coughing and sneezing and to throw them in the bin. They have also been urged to keep an eye out for students with flu symptoms and arrange for them to go home as soon as possible. They should have parents’ phone numbers to hand so they can be contacted, as well as the numbers of their local public health department if further advice is required.
In addition, hand towels, pens, pencils and wind instruments should not be shared in schools.
Creches have been told to have a system in place for checking children and staff each day for flu symptoms as they arrive. Anyone with symptoms should be sent home. They have also been told to discourage the sharing of pencils and crayons and to consider the removal of soft toys.
Children who develop swine flu symptoms and are sent home from school should ideally by given a face mask by their parents to help prevent them spreading the virus to other family members, according to the national Health Protection Surveillance Centre (HPSC).
In a new advice leaflet for parents, the HPSC says the sick person should “if available and tolerated . . . wear a face mask when sharing common spaces with other household members to help prevent spreading the virus to others”. The advice comes as most of the 800,000 students in primary and second-level schools return to their desks today after the summer break.
The leaflet points out that most children can be cared for without the need for medical attention. But parents should seek urgent medical attention if their child has trouble breathing, has pain in the chest or abdomen, becomes suddenly dizzy, has severe or persistent vomiting, is confused or blue/grey in colour.
Meanwhile, the National Education Welfare Board has warned that parents who keep children out of school over unnecessary fears around swine flu could be prosecuted. Eddie Ward, chief executive of the board, told the Sunday Tribune that he would work with schools to identify absences that raised concerns.
He said there was no question of parents being pursued if their child was ill with swine flu, but stressed the advice from health authorities was parents should send their children to school.
“Every parent has an obligation to send a child to school and where a parent wilfully flouts the law, the necessary steps will be taken,” he said.