When the school year begins, so does the back-to-school plague. Every year, viruses spread across the campus, infecting students and staff alike. While getting a virus is not completely avoidable, there are some ways to help prevent illnesses. 

Some helpful preventatives include: 

• Washing your hands regularly
• Avoiding eating and drinking after others
• Eating three meals a day
• Sleeping seven to eight hours a night
• Avoiding touching your face

School nurse Anastasia Ziegler said, “With everybody back together, there are more germs, and I feel like kids aren’t as good about washing their hands as they used to be.” 

Washing your hands often, especially in a school setting, is the most beneficial method to helping prevent the spread of germs. At the beginning of the year, it is even more important because of the sudden increase of germs in the environment. Students should wash their hands before eating their lunch. Even a drop or two of hand sanitizer will be better than nothing.

Ziegler has also stated that students need to be eating more, especially for breakfast.

 “I had a boy come in the other day with a stomach ache, and when I asked him if he had eaten breakfast, he said cookies. I know when you guys wake up in the morning, you’re so tired and you just want to get ready and go to school, but even just a granola bar so that there is something good in your stomach is good enough,” Ziegler said. 

Having a well balanced diet and three meals a day are essential for your health. Making sure that you have all of your necessary vitamins and nutrients keeps your body, and thus your immune system, much stronger.

Now, what should you do if you are sick? Stay home! If you have a fever of one hundred degrees, you are infectious, and you shouldn’t be in school. This will help you recover faster, and also keep your peers safe from the plague. 

As per the school’s handbook: for every day that a student is absent, he/she is given a day to make up for their work. Students should put their health before their schoolwork and take days off when they are sick. The pressure of school work piling up may make people decide to continue going to school while sick, but their performance will be lower, and they won’t get as good of a grade. It’s better to rest and use your time wisely to catch up when you come back.

With the winter months ahead, viruses will likely still run rampant. Staying home while sick, washing hands, and eating healthy are all important to keeping the school healthy. I

“Stay home if you’re sick, it’s the best way to take care of you and everybody else,” said Ziegler.