Cities

Email|Link|Comments (0)Posted by Elizabeth Cooney July 20, 2009 08:53 PM As they prepare for a fall flu season that could bring two nasty strains, Boston health officials are studying whether school closings helped to stop the spread of swine flu during the spring. Dr. Anita Barry, director of the infectious disease bureau at the Boston Public Health Commission, said the agency is still analyzing case reports from private and public schools that closed after abseentism rates soared. They expect to have answers in a month that will tell them if closing schools broke the chain of transmission of swine flu, known by its scientific name H1N1. The Boston review continues even as an article appearing today in a special issue of the British medical journal The Lancet Infectious Diseases concludes that closing schools early in a pandemic can reduce the number of cases at its peak, but cases might rise later when they reopened, leading to the same totals had schools not been shuttered. This flattening in the number of cases was observed in epidemics dating from 1918 through 2008.