Schools in San Carlos City, Negros Occidental, have shifted from face-to-face classes to the modular learning mode following an upsurge of sore eyes cases.
A total of 1,547 elementary and high school students and 10 personnel of the San Carlos Schools Division have been hit with sore eyes from April to Thursday, May 25, Dr. Evangelene Abana Froilan, division medical officer, said.
A division memorandum issued May 19 said to prevent further spread of infection, schools are advised to shift to modular learning starting May 20 to 31, 2023. Face-to-face classes shall resume on June 1, it added.
School personnel were also directed to disinfect frequently used surfaces such as doorknobs, handrails, tables, and chairs.
Dr. Mary Genevieve Guiritan-Montaño, City Health Office technical adviser, said an information drive has been launched to prevent the further spread of sore eyes in the schools and in the city. The likelihood is if a student has sore eyes the whole household will be infected, which is why it is important to practice proper hygiene, she said.
A health advisory circulated in San Carlos City states that the modes off transmission of sore eyes are:
*Direct contact by one’s eyes with hands contaminated with eye secretions of an infected person;
*Touching of eyes with hands that have had contact with surfaces, instruments, eye solutions, make-ups contaminated with the virus from an infected person; and
*Entry of the virus through the eyes by swimming in poorly chlorinated pools.
The advisory stressed the need to wash hands frequently and thoroughly with soap and water, minimize hand-to-eye contact, and to use one’s own towels, eye drops, make-ups and applicators, sunglasses or eye glasses.
The public is also advised to wear eyeglasses or sunglasses on a windy day to protect one’s eyes from foreign particles, avoid crowded places, and to disinfect surfaces, doorknobs, counters, elevator buttons and hand rails with diluted bleach solution.
Clothes, towels, pillow cases and anything else which may have come in contact with an infected person should be washed, it added.*