Christmas break may have arrived at the perfect time for USD 257 schools to avoid a widespread onset of illnesses.
A survey of local schools reveals most — at least so far — have avoided large numbers of illness-related absences.
“It was looking really bad right before the break,” reported Kyleigh Harper, secretary at Iola High School. “But since they’ve come back, the numbers have been pretty mild. I think having everybody home those two weeks helped.”
Iola High School has averaged five or six illness-related absences daily since students returned Tuesday, a far cry from the worst of the cold and flu seasons, where IHS saw dozens of students and teachers missing class.
If anything, the spate of unseasonably warm temperatures this winter has meant dealing more with allergies than influenza, Harper noted.
Other schools, such as Iola Middle School, Marmaton Valley Elementary School and Humboldt Elementary School reported similar results, with a few illnesses, but nothing widespread.
Charles Wanker, a physician at Community Health Center of Southeast Kansas’s Iola clinic, reported a “less than average” flu season.
“The warm weather we’ve had so far may be the reason, but it’s been warm up north,” where numbers have spiked, Wanker said.
IT’S MUCH too soon to predict how the rest of the cold and flu season will progress, Wanker said.
“Sometimes the flu numbers are worse in December,” he said. “Sometimes it’s January, sometimes it’s February. You could have a few numbers here or there, and then by next week be slammed.”
This part of the state may be bucking the national trend.
New government data posted this week for flu activity through the week of Christmas, showed by some measures this season may surpass recent years, including the 2024-25 epidemic.
Forty-five states were reporting “high or very high” flu activity, up from 30 states a week prior, the Associated Press reported.
The higher numbers appear to be driven by the type of flu that’s been spreading, public health experts say.
One type of flu virus, called A H3N2, historically has caused the most hospitalizations and deaths in older people. So far this season, that’s the type most frequently reported. Even more concerning, more than 90% of the H3N2 infections analyzed were a new version — known as the subclade K variant — that differs from the strain in this year’s flu shots.
Flu seasons often don’t peak until January or February, so it’s too early to know how big a problem that mismatch will be.
