Charleroi Area School District in Pennsylvania returns to remote learning after 80 students showed up to nurse’s office amid rampaging winter flu outbreak

• Three campuses within the Charleroi Area School District, near Pittsburgh, transitioned to remote learning last week
• The decision followed an influenza outbreak at the elementary school, which led to some students being hospitalized
• School district across the nation have seen outbreaks of illness in recent weeks 

A Pittsburgh-area school district returned to remote learning after nearly 100 students experienced flu-like symptoms amid one of the worst flu seasons of the past decade.

Lessons across the elementary, middle and high school campuses within the Charleroi Area School District moved online after dozens of elementary students fell ill.

Officials said 81 students went to the nurse’s office Wednesday reporting flu-like symptoms. More than 30 students were sent home, with some needing to be hospitalized. That prompted officials to close the district’s schools and move classrooms online. 

‘But we know it was the right one to protect our students and our staff,’ Charleroi Area Superintendent Ed Zelich told CBS.

The decision in Pennsylvania follows outbreaks seen in schools and districts across the nation, including in Texas, Tennessee and Michigan. Some areas have seen up to 40 percent of students reporting illness-related absences on a single day. 

In Charleroi, the elementary, middle and high schools were closed through Monday, while all weekend activities were canceled. 

Several members of staff including cooks and custodians went home with the same symptoms. 

Zelich said the outbreak was unprecedented in his 10-year tenure with the district.

‘The turning point was when the elementary school nurse had called me yesterday and said she needed to see me immediately,’ the superintendent said Thursday.

‘When you get 80 students visiting the office and over 30 are going home prior to noon, we have an issue.’

The district pivoted to remote learning using systems that were put in place during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Although in-person learning resumed Monday, the district was still plagued by a high number of absences, especially among younger children. At least 30 elementary students were sent home, and 36 percent of district students were absent. 

The district does not plan to return to virtual learning this week, but Zelich encouraged parents to be careful when deciding to send their children to school.

Illnesses have been impacting schools nationwide and last week, Happy Independent School District in Texas canceled school after roughly 40 percent of students in the elementary school were out sick.

Superintendent Trevor Egdemon said the district was running out of teachers because so many were absent, ABC7 reported.

On December 7, Perry County Schools in Middle Tennessee announced it would be closed for the remainder of the week due to unspecified ‘illness.’

This week, Michigan’s Buckley Community Schools canceled school across the district after around 30 percent of students fell ill.

Superintendent Jessica Harrand told WPBN that most of the pupils were elementary students and that most were experiencing flu-like symptoms.

More than a dozen states are experiencing a surge in infection rates for the flu, respiratory syncytial virus and COVID, with rates of infections either ‘high’ or ‘very high.’

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reports 15 states are experiencing elevated rates of infections.

The figure is based on the weekly percentage of visits to healthcare providers or hospitals involving patients complaining of a fever cough or sore throat.

The 2022-2023 flu season is on record to be one of the worst of the past decade, with 31,000,000 symptomatic cases reported so far, according to CDC data.

Flu viruses are constantly adapting, producing new strains each year that are immune to existing vaccines. That allows the disease to spread prolifically with a particular impact on children, whose underdeveloped immune systems put them at greater risk.

The World Health Organization estimates around a billion cases of seasonal influenza annually, including three to five million cases of severe illness.

The virus causes between 290,000 and 650,000 respiratory deaths across the globe each year.