51³Ô¹Ï

PHS Chicken Pox Warning

A letter to parents about chicken pox at Percy 51³Ô¹Ï School

Dear Parent/Carer

Please be advised that there has been one case of Chicken Pox in school and your child may have come into contact with this.

Some information about Chicken Pox is detailed below, if you have any concerns please contact one of the School Nurses.  Should your child become infected they should not return to school until the last spot to have appeared has scabbed and dried up.

The most commonly recognised chickenpox symptom is a red rash that can cover the entire body.

However, even before the rash appears, you or your child may have some mild flu-like symptoms including:

  • feeling sick
  • a high temperature (fever) of 38ºC (100.4ºF) or over
  • aching, painful muscles
  • headache
  • generally feeling unwell
  • loss of appetite

These flu-like symptoms, especially the fever, tend to be worse in adults than in children.

Chickenpox spots

Soon after the flu-like symptoms, an itchy rash appears. Some children and adults may only have a few spots, but others are covered from head to toe.

The spots normally appear in clusters and tend to be:

  • behind the ears
  • on the face
  • over the scalp
  • under the arms
  • on the chest and belly
  • on the arms and legs

But the spots can be anywhere on the body, even inside the ears and mouth, on the palms of the hands, soles of the feet and inside the nappy area.

Although the rash starts as small, itchy red spots, after about 12-14 hours the spots develop a blister on top and become intensely itchy.

After a day or two, the fluid in the blisters gets cloudy and they begin to dry out and crust over.

After one to two weeks, the crusting skin will fall off naturally.

New spots can keep appearing in waves for three to five days after the rash begins. Therefore, different clusters of spots may be at different stages of blistering or drying out.

Yours faithfully,

School Nurses