MANILA, Philippines ? Even the Department of Health (DOH) has had enough of school suspensions because of the Influenza A(H1N1) virus.

Stressing that the new virus was ?generally mild? though it was spreading fast, the DOH revised its response guidelines for schools confronted with confirmed swine flu cases among their students and staff.

Under the amended Interim Guidelines No. 18, schools with confirmed cases can only suspend classes once.

To minimize class disruption, suspensions should also be limited only to specific class sections with a confirmed case or to the affected floor level of a building.

The DOH issued the revised guidelines yesterday as scores of affected schools and universities were set to end their voluntary shutdown.

The DOH still allows schools that report their first confirmed A(H1N1) case to suspend classes for 10 days at most to prevent other students from being exposed to the virus while administrators undertake school decontamination and a campaign on personal hygiene awareness.

But under the new guidelines, the DOH said schools that had lifted their suspension should no longer postpone classes again even if new cases were reported.

?There is no value in suspending classes for the same group of students or school staff in case another confirmed case is detected in the group,? the DOH said.

High likelihood

The department said the likelihood that transmission had occurred before the occurrence of symptoms and laboratory testing was high.

?Thus, the emphasis of infection management should be shifted to individual patient care,? it said.

School administrators only have to send ill students and staff back home or to a clinic if they have severe symptoms.

Even in the event of a sustained community-level outbreak, the DOH?s new guidelines said schools need not suspend classes since the virus was already circulating in the community.

In case of a sustained outbreak, schools should only suspend classes when there is an ?unusually severe illness or clinical manifestation? and when there is a ?large number of simultaneously ill students and/or school staff.?

The DOH yesterday reported 123 more confirmed cases while 85 more A(H1N1) patients have fully recovered. This brings the total count of fully recovered cases to 536, or 74 per cent of all confirmed cases since May 21.

Ateneo law school

Two students from Ateneo de Manila Law School in Makati City became the latest confirmed cases, the city government said yesterday.

The city health officer, Dr. Lourdes Salud, said the school in Rockwell Center did not shut down yesterday.

Instead, the school only suspended for 10 days the classes of the sections where the affected freshman and senior law students belonged, Salud said.

Another school got a confirmed flu case yesterday.

Arellano High School

Teresita Domalanta, Department of Education-National Capital Region director, said Arellano High School in Manila had one student who tested positive for the flu.

The school is suspending classes for 10 days for general cleaning.

?But I told them to include the suspension of classes due to Storm ?Feria? and Saturday and Sunday so that their school calendar would not be affected that much,? Domalanta said.