‘Plan and be prepared’
School districts receive training for ‘pandemic scenarios’
As officials in China struggle to contain an outbreak of coronavirus, regional officials gathered in Yuma to discuss what to do in the event of such an emergency here.
School district personnel, college and university staff and other educational entities from Yuma County as well as Sonora and Baja
California converged at Arizona Western College on Friday for a day of professional development. Together with the Yuma Fire Department and Yuma Regional Medical Center, the Yuma County Public Health Services District hosted “The Pandemic Influenza in an Educational Setting” – an interactive emergency response training for potential schoolbased outbreaks.
The event included tabletop exercises and in-depth discussions on how regional agencies and institutions would respond in the event of a new virus outbreak, providing participants with opportunities to exercise and evaluate response plans, policies and procedures already in place for health emergencies.
“The goal is to plan and be prepared,” said Diana Gomez, Public Health Services
District director.
The event was a firsttime experience for collective school districts. With the recent coronavirus outbreak in China, the timing for a training of this nature is perfect and “a little eerie,” according to Lynn Harlow-Smith.
“We opened this to the schools to allow all partners to work together to create a more resilient community,” said Harlow-Smith,
public health emergency preparedness coordinator. “They may represent different grade levels, but they represent the same community and many of the same families. The biggest takeaway from this is understanding what the protocol is and what our roles are in such an event.”
According to HarlowSmith, a pandemic virus differs from a seasonal virus in the fact that it is new and therefore may not yet have an available vaccine. Pandemic viruses are often more severe than seasonal viruses because most people lack immunity to them upon outbreak.
Research shows that many outbreaks begin in school settings, as schoolage children and young adults have the highest
virus “attack rates.” According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), schoolbased outbreaks often “give rise to communitywide outbreaks,” thus increasing the need for districts to have a response plan in place.
And with Yuma County’s geographic position, administrators say collaborative preparedness is paramount.
“Our area is very unique in the sense of location,” said Yuma County School
Superintendent Tom Tyree. “Our place on the Mexico and California borders and the amount of travel that goes on between them makes our community different from other parts of the country. And that compounds on what we need to do as precautions.”
The CDC has created a number of resources for pandemic preparedness, including checklists for childcare program, K-12 and college and university administrators. These are accessible at cdc.gov/ nonpharmaceutical-interventions.
There are other recommended actions for preventing the spread of viruses that can be practiced anywhere and by anyone, such as covering your cough, washing your hands with soap and water for at least 20 seconds, cleaning frequently-touched surfaces and – most importantly – staying home from work or school when you have flu-like symptoms.
Additional information on virus prevention and health emergency preparedness can be found on the Yuma County Public Health Services District’s website, yumacountyaz. gov/government/healthdistrict.