Quarantined Carlsbad students to return from China

Most of the 42 students and teachers from a private school in Carlsbad who were quarantined in China this month after a few people contracted the swine flu were headed home Friday, it was reported.

All but five of the students and two of the teachers from Pacific Ridge School will travel to Shanghai, where they will board a flight home on Saturday, The San Diego Union-Tribune reported.

The remaining five students and one of the two teachers were still under quarantine in a Chinese hospital, recovering from confirmed cases of swine flu, according to the newspaper. They were reportedly expected to be cleared to travel in three to five days.

The other teacher staying behind was free from quarantine but was staying at a hotel near the hospital to help chaperone the remaining students upon their release, the Union-Tribune reported.

All 42 members of the group — 35 ninth-graders and seven teachers — received the anti-viral medication Tamiflu, although only a few actually contracted swine flu, according to the newspaper.

The decision to quarantine the group and treat everyone is consistent with the protocol the World Health Organization set up when they declared a swine flu pandemic last week. Also known as the H1N1 virus, the flu has stricken nearly 36,000 people worldwide since earlier this year, according to WHO.

As of Thursday afternoon, there were 290 confirmed cases of the virus in San Diego County. On Monday, the first death from swine flu was reported in the county. A 20-year-old, otherwise healthy woman from San Marcos died in the emergency room at Palomar Medical Center in Escondido just one day after developing symptoms, according to San Diego’s public health officer, Dr. Wilma Wooten.

Tags: SDNN

This entry was posted on Friday, June 19th, 2009 at 6:47 am and is filed under Health, Local News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.