Thank you. That's a good question.
We know that schools act as a culture ground for the spread of influenza viruses. When these viruses enter a community, they first affect younger people, because younger people are naive and have little resistance. In Australian day cares and schools, because of the close contact, we see the level of replication of the virus multiply in those communities before they move to families, before they then move into the adult population, and before they move into the community at large.
One of our criteria has been, what should we do when we get outbreaks in schools? Should we be closing schools? There is evidence that, because viruses will spread in the schools, should we close the schools and should we keep all children at home, we slow down the spread of the virus and delay its entry into the general population. In fact, that's what's happening over the summer holidays. We had the virus in the broader community, the schools broke for holidays, and the levels of influenza activity have continued but at lower levels. When the kids come back, they're going to ramp up.
Our initial response in British Columbia and south of the border in the United States, when we identified H1N1 in schools, was to close those schools down. Other provinces didn't. We've looked at the evidence as to whether school closures can be effective in mitigating or ramping down the spread of influenza. If this influenza were really severe, were really making many children very, very sick, had serious implications for the health structure or health of the broader population, it might be worth incurring the social costs of closing schools down—because that has impacts on the broader economy, impacts on parents who have to stay home. It only works if children actually stay home in relative isolation. If we close the schools down and the kids mingle in the malls, we've accomplished nothing but disrupting their educational process in civil society.
We've looked at the evidence, and the documents that the minister was talking about are in fact evidence-based guidelines for what public health officials and school officials can do or should do in response to outbreaks of H1N1 influenza in schools, which is essentially focused on prevention by keeping sick children home, focused on hygiene, focused on identifying kids who are ill and isolating them until they can be sent home, and basically keeping the schools going as long as there is a sufficiency of adult staff to keep the school safely open.