State officials reported Tuesday that three more people have died of the flu in Arkansas, raising the state's death toll in the current flu season to 36, as several more schools announced that they would close for one or more days because of the level of illness among students and employees.
Throughout the state, the spread of the virus this season has prompted at least 23 schools or school districts to close for one or more days, according to a state Health Department report.
In Little Rock, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Rockefeller elementary schools were closed Tuesday and will be closed again today.
Little Rock School District leaders said custodians were disinfecting the schools. Efforts are also underway by the district staff to clean all other buildings in the district as a precaution.
Other districts in Pulaski County are monitoring absences on campuses. The Pulaski County Special School District is disinfecting its schools and buses. It started in the Maumelle area last week because of a higher incidence of flu there, said district spokeswoman Jessica Duff.
"We're not really seeing a big flu problem here in Jacksonville," said Cheesa Williams, spokeswoman for the Jacksonville/North Pulaski School District, adding: "We are seeing our fair share of colds, strep throat and sinus infections."
In contrast, the Cabot School District is closing all of its 18 campuses Thursday and Friday seeking to prevent an increase in illness among students and staff members at a time when mild weather from early this week is forecast to turn cold, which could worsen the rate of illness, district leaders announced on the system's website.
The Cabot district is asking that parents of sick children not send them to school until the students meet the requirements to return. A diagnosis of flu requires being out of school for five days and fever-free for 24 hours without fever-reducing medication, according to the Cabot website.
"We hope the upcoming long four-day weekend will help combat the spread of illness and give students and staff time to recuperate and return to school healthy on Monday, February 10," the district stated on its website.
Other schools or districts with closures this week include the Decatur district, which was closed Friday and Monday; the Guy-Perkins district in Faulkner County, which was closed Monday; the Beebe district, which was closed Monday and Tuesday; and the Newport Special School District, which beginning today will be closed for the rest of the week.
Joel Tumilson, a medical consultant in the Health Department's outbreak response section, said the department doesn't make recommendations to schools on whether they should close.
"It's kind of hard to say from a medical perspective" if such closures are effective in slowing the spread of the flu, he said.
But, he said, school officials may decide that the number of absences among students and teachers would make it difficult to continue holding classes.
Schools typically use the time when they are closed to "do a nice deep disinfection and clean everything real well, which has value," he added.
The state's latest flu deaths, reported within the past week, were of two people age 45-64 and one who was age 25-44.
Of the others who have died of the flu this season, one was a child or teenager age 5-18, four were people 25-44, nine were 45-64 and 19 were 65 or older.
The flu season generally runs from October through May.
At about this point last year, Arkansas had recorded 23 flu-related deaths. By the end of that flu season, 120 people had died.
During the week that ended Jan. 25, Arkansas was among 41 states reporting a high level of flu activity as determined by the percentage of patients in doctor's offices who had flu-like symptoms, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The flu level was described as moderate in seven states. Two states, Delaware and Idaho, did not have enough data to calculate an activity level.
In Arkansas, "I think we're definitely still in the middle of it," Tumilson said. He said it's not too late for people who haven't gotten a flu shot to get one. People can also help slow the spread of the flu by washing their hands frequently and staying away from other people if they're sick, he said.
CORRECTION: A previous version of this story misstated the status of Lisa Academy North Middle-High School. It is open Wednesday and Thursday.
Metro on 02/05/2020