# Kansas School District Cancels Classes Early Due to Illness
TOPEKA – A Kansas school district dismissed classes on Monday, three days earlier than planned, after reporting a “tremendous amount of sickness” spreading at a high rate.
Dexter Schools, USD 471 in Cowley County, announced in a Facebook post that it would cancel school and all activities starting Tuesday. The second quarter was suppose to end Thursday.
“Not only are we concerned with student and staff sickness, now we don’t want to continue to spread the sickness and end up with students taking it to their extended families (grandma and grandpa) over the holiday break,” the post said.
the Kansas database tracking influenza, COVID-19 and othre respiratory infection visits to hospital emergency departments did not show a big jump over the past few weeks, but there was an uptick.
Dana Hawkinson, medical director of infection prevention and control for the University of Kansas Health System, said the state trends for influenza match what has happened in the last two to three years.
“The overall trends of the influenza activity, as well as with RSV (respiratory syncytial virus) and COVID, right now continues to be low, but it is indeed increasing,” Hawkinson said. “It has been increasing over the past couple of weeks, so we are seeing more testing and more percentage of positive tests as well. This is nationally, but also at our institution as well.”
The school district’s post didn’t specify what type of illness was going around and Kansas Reflector’s call to the district office Friday went unanswered. Hawkinson said rhinovirus has been more prevalent so