Yvonne Webb

Pan­ic reigned at St There­sa's Pri­ma­ry School, Wood­brook, yes­ter­day as con­cerned par­ents rushed to re­move their chil­dren from the com­pound, fol­low­ing a sus­pect­ed case of the H1N1 virus.

This is the sec­ond school to be struck by the virus in as many weeks. Three cas­es have been con­firmed at the San Fer­nan­do-based Grant Memo­r­i­al Pres­by­ter­ian School. Teach­ers stayed away from class­es yes­ter­day.

The af­fect­ed Port-of-Spain stu­dent has been con­firmed as hav­ing In­fluen­za A and swabs have been sent to Carec to de­ter­mine whether it car­ries the virus. The child has been quar­an­tined.

As a pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sure, the school, act­ing on the ad­vice of the Min­istries of Health and Ed­u­ca­tion, re­lo­cat­ed the stu­dent pop­u­la­tion to the near­by church com­pound, where class­es were be­ing con­duct­ed.

How­ev­er, as oth­er stu­dents start­ed falling ill, par­ents rushed to the school to re­move their young charges. Class­es have since been sus­pend­ed.

The Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion, in a re­lease yes­ter­day, urged par­ents to co-op­er­ate in the in­ter­est of main­tain­ing a calm en­vi­ron­ment for all stu­dents.

The min­istry al­so ad­vised against with­draw­ing stu­dents from class­es un­less it was ab­solute­ly nec­es­sary and in cir­cum­stances where the risk to stu­dents was con­firmed.

In light of new and un­con­firmed cas­es be­ing re­port­ed, the min­istry said ac­tion to sus­pend in­di­vid­ual class­es or the clo­sure of the en­tire school in the event of mul­ti­ple cas­es, will be tak­en on the in­struc­tion of the Min­istry of Health.