By Erica Wright
The Birmingham Times
Jefferson County health and school officials met Tuesday to discuss updates and preventive steps to deal with the COVID-19 coronavirus that has caused an outbreak of a respiratory illness globally and led to more than 2,400 deaths worldwide including 11 in the U.S.
The Jefferson County Department of Health (JCDH) gathered medical professionals and school administrators from Hoover, Mountain Brook, Homewood, Tarrant and others for the briefing.
“The biggest thing that I talk about right now is making sure that anyone who can take a flu shot has taken their flu shot, not because it will prevent the coronavirus but because we can unburden our hospitals and doctors as much as possible,” said Wesley Willeford, M.D., JCDH Medical Director for Disease Control.
The virus can spread from person to person through sneezing or coughing and is more likely to spread in larger groups, like schools, according to Willeford. Symptoms of the virus include fever, runny nose, headache, cough and a feeling of being unwell, which are the same symptoms of the common flu virus.
Willeford said school administrators should let their teachers know the importance of washing hands frequently with soap and water or an alcohol based hand gel, covering your mouth when coughing or sneezing, staying at home from work or school if you have a fever and cleaning and disinfecting all surfaces at home, school and work as often as possible.
“With any type of respiratory illness, when you have people really close together [and] that does increase your chance for spreading because that is just more opportunities for the virus to go and infect another person. Certainly, the same would go for the coronavirus,” said Willeford.
Richard Barlow, Ed.D., superintendent of Mountain Brook Schools who attended the meeting, said schools in his district have begun precautions “by simple things like cleaning the tables, or cleaning doorknobs . . . reminding our students to wash their hands,” said Barlow. “We’ve reinforced the idea to our students that we need to clean classrooms every day and multiple times during the day.
“We’re continuing to monitor this pandemic just to make sure that we’re on top of it and that we’re trying to take care of our students the best way we can in our communities,” said Barlow.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) has indicated that further spread of the virus is likely in the United States, however there are no known cases in Alabama to date.
“The CDC has been moving away from ‘if’ but ‘when’ [about the possible spread to Alabama] and I think that’s fair to say we do have a lot of travel in and out of Alabama and I think we’re as equally as likely as any other state to have an infection,” said Willeford, “so I would say it’s probably more likely than not at some point we will see a case.”
In addition to the meeting with school officials, JCDH will be sending letters to businesses to inform them of best practices certified by the CDC.
Both the CDC and the Alabama Department of Public Health have published guidance on the virus. Visit www.cdc.gov/coronavirus or www.alabamapublichealth.org for more information and to access the guidance.
