Dr Miriam Stoppard

How to talk to your kids about outbreak

THERE’S no way your children can escape the knowledge that we’re in the throes of an epidemic. It will be talked about at school, on social media and the likelihood is they’ll pick up on your own anxiety.

Even though you’re apprehensive about the epidemic your children are not. You have it within your power to instill in your child calm realism. Because a lot of the news is good. Most cases are mild, only the elderly are vulnerable and fatalities are rare.

It’s unlikely they will ask anything more searching than what’s the virus? Your answer can be equally simple – it’s an illness that’s sometimes serious sometimes not.

We’re being very good about finding out who has the infection and making sure they don’t spread it to other people. That’s why it’s important to wash our hands often and not to touch our face. It’s also why we aren’t travelling on trains and planes.

When a virus spreads in our town it’s called an epidemic and when it spreads around the world the name is pandemic. The infection is different in different people. It’s like, for instance, when we have a cold it gets better in a couple of days, but if you get flu you could be in bed for a longer time.

Not everyone who gets the virus needs to go to hospital but they may need to stay in their room so that they don’t spread the infection. If we obey all the rules it’s unlikely that anyone in our family will catch the virus.

You’re unlikely to catch the virus and so are mum and dad. Should we get it, it’s likely to be quite a mild illness like a dose of flu and you’re unlikely to get it because children seem to be immune to the virus.

Older people are vulnerable so we’re keeping an eye on granny and grandad to make sure if they catch it we can get them to hospital quickly. We’re working on a vaccine, which could be ready in less than a year.

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