The Seremi de Salud de Coquimbo reported that more than 350 students at Francis School in the port city were infected with norovirus. It is spread through contaminated food, contaminated water, sick people, and contaminated surfaces.
The Seremi of Health of Coquimbo, Paola Salas, indicated in the media El País that, to date, the infected people correspond to 18 teachers and 356 students.
Of the 374 affected, 79 went to a Primary Health Care (PHC) facility and presented the following symptoms:
Abdominal pain.
Diarrhoea.
Fever.
Nausea.
Vomiting.
The health authority specified that “we aim to discover the infectious agent through samples, which we send to the Public Health Institute of Chile (ISP).”
Among their theories, they point out that the infections were due to a hand-to-hand outbreak, due to the lack of health education, such as disinfecting certain surfaces with chlorine and washing hands.
He also ruled out that the infections have been caused by contaminated water, since the studies showed that the water of the establishment is chlorinated and without contamination elements.
“If there is an infected child who has siblings in other schools or a teacher who works in other campuses, it could be transmitted, but, although we are still crossing that information with the PHC database, we have not had complaints or cases from other schools, so we call on the information to send us the information if there are similar cases.” Salas closed.
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