As we move through flu season, thank you for the care and dedication you show our children every single day. Keeping our classrooms healthy is a team effort, and your commitment to flu-prevention practices—vaccination, handwashing, cleaning routines, and staying home when sick—truly makes a difference.
Every step you take helps protect our little learners, their families, and each other. Your consistency, compassion, and professionalism are what keep our community strong. Thank you for all you do to create safe spaces where children can grow, explore, and thrive.
Together, we keep our classrooms healthy and our children learning.
Teach families how to reduce the spread of infection among family members with the following practices::
• Use proper hand hygiene. Wash hands thoroughly with soap and water when visibly dirty, when contaminated by blood or other body fluids (including mucous membranes), when in contact with a contaminated surface, after a suspected or known exposure to contagious organisms, after using the restroom, and before eating (Centers for Disease Control [CDC], 2019d). Use alcohol-based hand sanitizer to clean the hands in all other routine clinical situations.
• Use disposable tissues and discard immediately after use.
• Teach children to cough or sneeze into their elbow rather than their hands.
• Teach children to wash their hands with soap and water after toileting and before eating.
• Do not allow children to share dishes and utensils.
• Wash hands before preparing food and again several times during the food preparation process. Follow guidelines for safe food preparation and storage. Use warm soapy water to wash dishes and cutting boards.
Wipe surfaces that are used for diaper changes or that the child touches with warm, soapy water or a disinfectant. Make sure the diaper-changing area is well away from food preparation areas.
• Dispose of diapers in closed containers.
• Use standard and transmission-based precautions
• Promote and provide immunizations.
• Wear a face covering as recommended.
• Separate and quarantine ill children from well children. Separate children at high risk for infection from those with infections in all clinical settings.
• Eliminate the habitat or reservoir of the host (e.g., eliminate standing water where mosquitoes breed).
• Destroy the pathogen (e.g., sanitize toys and surfaces exposed to organisms).