Parents and students at Duchess Park Secondary School received letters home regarding the whopping cough.
As a result, Northern Health issued some updated information regarding the illness yesterday after a case was confirmed.
“When those reports come in, we look for confirmation of the information from Northern Health and indeed we did receive that as a confirmed case. The school’s job at that point is to communicate that out to the school community,” said Marilyn Marquis-Forster, School District 57 Superintendent who spoke with MY PG Now.
“The child was in the care of the family who was having the child seen by physicians and the parents very graciously let the school know because it is important everybody knows what to look for in case something was shared.”
According to reports, the female student was vaccinated and caught it from someone else right before Christmas and hasn’t been to class in a while.
Medical Health Officer Dr. Andrew Gray believes cases such as this one aren’t entirely uncommon.
“It’s a fairly common infection that’s been circulating in Northern BC for several years now, we had a lot more cases in 2014 and 2015 and it’s been declining since then but we do see the occasional case.”
The infection can be a difficult one to shake off.
“It starts off similar to the common cold with a sore throat, cough, and a runny nose and maybe some mild fever nut the most distinctive feature of pertussis is really that cough can get pretty prolonged and pretty tiresome with long coughing spells and mucus being coughed up and it can last more than a month sometimes.”
Gray adds vaccinations are available through Northern Health, especially for infants and school-aged kids.
The vaccination isn’t 100% effective though as it only lasts for three years.