Get to grips with the back-toschool bugs

If you don’t want constant sniffles and the dreaded vomiting, these tips could help, finds Hattie Garlick

Over the last few weeks, 8.67 million children have flooded back through the school gates. Alongside their shiny new stationery sets, they carried with them their parents’ hopes and dreams: make friends, be happy, enrich your mind – and don’t bring home any bugs.

“I dread September,” says Charlotte Nash, a mother of two from Derbyshire. “If a child in the village is sick then I will keep my lot well away from them, and dose them with vitamins. If I know the vomiting bug is going around, I turn into a crazed woman.”

Dr Akash Deep is a paediatrician at the Portland hospital. He is father to a 10-year-old and a self-professed “obsessive” when it comes to back-toschool illnesses. “She’s got hand sanitiser in her school bag,” he laughs.

My children returned to school last Wednesday. By Friday, the six-year-old was reaching for the tissues; three days later, I write this with a scratchy throat and itchy eyes.

Compared with the average adult’s two to three, most children will have around six colds a year. Why? Viruses, like the common cold or cough, are transmitted mainly through touch or the air we breathe and, explains Dr Deep: “Children tend not to cover their mouths when coughing, or their noses when sneezing. They touch each other and put their fingers in their mouths a lot more than adults too.”

Why do incidences of these bugs peak in the autumn term? “Lots of children now find themselves waking up earlier, working hard, then going to clubs…” says Dr Deep. “They can get really tired. And when you’re exhausted, you’re more prone to infections.”

And schools are germ factories. “After holidays, children are suddenly gathered together in big groups and closed spaces,” says Dr Deep, “so infections spread rapidly.” Nursery schools and reception classes are – effectively – primary-coloured Petri dishes, since children wander around, coughing and clambering on the same toys. A 2015 study from the University of Utah School of Medicine found that underfives housed viruses in their snot for 50 per cent of the year. They were also 1.5 times more likely to do the things that spread infection, like coughing without covering their mouths.

Since dressing your child in a hazmat suit is frowned upon, this means the rest of the family will fall ill with all the predictability of a snotty set of dominoes. Childless houses – the researchers found – catch viruses just three or four weeks a year. Add one child, and that figure rises to 18 weeks. Add six children, and the family will be stricken with a virus for up to 45 weeks. That’s 87 per cent of the time.

What can you do to prevent back-toschool-bugs? Or, at least, beat them off fast? We grilled three experts (warning: not to be read over breakfast…)

IN NEED OF BED REST? Children catch around six colds per year, while adults get three