The mother of the sick 10-year-old regrets that she was not advised to apply for tests immediately after the symptoms started: “The disease probably wouldn’t have spread so widely.”
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Helsinki Jaana Salo regrets that the family was initially given the wrong instructions when the family’s 10-year-old son was sick with whooping cough.
In the Wilma message service between the school and the student’s guardian, Salo was advised to wait 1–2 weeks, and if the flu-like symptoms persist, then to apply for tests.
“The instructions were misleading. If it had been tested right away, the disease probably wouldn’t have spread as widely as it did,” Salo thinks.
Whooping cough is an upper respiratory tract infection caused by the bacterium Bordetella pertussis. The disease spreads as a droplet infection, and its incubation period is long, up to about 20 days at the longest.
Whooping cough has spent a month “hanging around with schoolmates, and probably went through the boy’s own school class,” says Salo, who lives in Oulunkylä. The boy went to school normally until the diagnosis came. An earlier diagnosis would have saved us less.”
Salo thinks that there is a wider spread of the infectious disease around Oulunkylä.
“Hinkuyskä has apparently gone through the boy’s entire school class. At school, even more people could have been exposed.”
The 10-year-old’s whooping cough was diagnosed after the samples were taken in the HUS lab. The boy was quarantined a week ago for a week, when he was away from school and soccer.
Disease according to the mother, it was not much of a problem for the patient. There was sputum from time to time, but no fever, for example. The nights passed peacefully sleeping. At least the family’s 6- and 8-year-old children haven’t gotten sick yet.
“Younger people are closer to vaccination. Apparently it [että he ovat säästyneet] because. The boy was also fully functional. He was only upset that he couldn’t go to school or to football training because of the quarantine.”
Principal of Oulunkylä elementary school Mari Koivukangas inform HS via text message that he is not interested in commenting on the topic.
The city of Helsinki sent an email to HS that the school’s students and parents have been informed about the disease in the Wilma message service and urged to see a doctor if symptoms similar to whooping cough appear.
Director of Diagnostics Lasse Lehtonen From the hospital district of Helsinki and Uusimaa (Hus) told HS earlier that cases of whooping cough have recently increased in the Husi area. Around 30–40 positive whooping cough samples were taken in mid-April, while at the beginning of the year there were only a few positive samples.
According to Lehtonen, children under the age of 1 in Finland are comprehensively vaccinated against whooping cough.
Like Lehtonen, Jaana Salo recommends guardians to be vigilant when children show symptoms, such as the flu. Especially if you have been diagnosed with whooping cough at school or in another environment.
The existence of Salo’s whooping cough also surprised me.
The manifestations of the disease can be very different for different people: “I thought, what the hell isn’t this [hinkuyskä] have already been removed from the world. On a general level, it is good for people to understand that whooping cough does not have any typical symptoms.”
Salo is also surprised by the diverse practices of healthcare. “My husband had flu symptoms. He was directly prescribed antibiotics without testing.”
Updated on 8.5 at 8:25: Added two sentences about how the city informed school children and parents about the matter.
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