School District Adopts Hands-Off Policy in H1N1 Prevention

With the fear of swine flu cases mounting as children prepare to head back to classrooms, one New York school district is taking a rather extreme step to limit exposure to the potentially deadly H1N1 virus.

The Glen Cove, Long Island school district, said all skin-on-skin contact - handshakes, high fives, or hugs - will be discouraged until otherwise noted. Laurence Aronstein, the superintendent of schools in the district said the unorthodox policy will be enforced when students return to school next week and that the precautionary measure includes all students from kindergartners to high school seniors. Aronstein acknowledges that the policy could be extremely difficult to implement and while most parents and students said they appreciate the steps the school is taking, many are worried that it's not enough to prevent the virus from spreading.

"I don't really buy it and the reason is: how are you going to prevent a 5-year-old from hugging their friends?" Kids just do that. It's a natural instinct." – Glen Cove Parent Annette Trip

Nassau University Medical Center Pediatrics Chairman Dr. Michael Frogel agrees that discouraging hugging is likely to have limited success in halting the swine flu. He's concerned the familiar messages of frequent hand-washing and getting students vaccinated may be lost if schools focus on forbidding skin-to-skin contact.

"I think the real emphasis is to diminish the hysteria. To not seek care that's not necessary. Let's worry about our regular ill population. Everyone should get vaccinated, everyone should do hand washing." - Dr. Michael Frogel

The announcement of the new policy came on the same day the New York State Education Department released amended guidelines on Swine Flu Prevention that did not include discouraging skin-to-skin contact in schools. The Nassau County Health Department also stops short of discouraging handshakes and high fives, but is not ruling out more severe restrictions in the future.

"This is a new virus so we don't know how it's going to behave and that's where the concern comes from. Is this going to change? We can only what's happened over the past few months and it hasn't mutated so that's good news." – Nassau County Health Commissioner Maria Torroella Carney

Government Health officials are expecting a rise in the number of swine flu cases when it re-emerges in the fall. This past spring, 47 New Yorkers died from the virus. So far, Nassau and Suffolk counties reportedly have a total of 286 confirmed swine flu cases. Ten people have died after contracting the H1N1 virus - including a pregnant woman. Nationwide, the H1N1 virus could infect as many as half of all Americans, sending nearly 2-million people to the hospital and killing up to 90,000.