District health administration has issued an alert against chicken pox, with cases being reported regularly from many parts of the district.
While no major outbreaks have been reported, the College of Engineering, Trivandrum (CET) was closed for two weeks on Monday, after 19 cases of chicken pox was reported amongst students, mostly hostel residents.
Thirteen students had been diagnosed clinically, while the rest had reported with fever and rashes, the beginning stage of the infection. The first case had been reported on January 29 and the next case on February 14. Chicken pox being a highly contagious, air-borne disease, it was natural for the infection to spread in hostels, which are often congested and where students are in close contact with each other.
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Patients are contagious up to five days before and five days after the first rash appears
The incubation period (the time from infection to symptoms) is about 14 to 21 days after contact with the virus. Hence it is likely that there will be more cases, the District Medical Officer, P. Preetha, said.
It was just two weeks ago that the Sree Chitra Tirunal College of Engineering at Pappanamcode had been closed for a fortnight following a cluster of chicken pox cases. About 25-30 cases had been reported.
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Dr. Preetha said that as summer intensifies it was usual for a number of cases to be reported every year
In unimmunised populations, most people contract chickenpox by age 15, but all ages can contract it. Unlike before, most of the youngsters today have not been exposed to the virus as children.
Chicken pox infection thus shows up more severely in adults and hence preventive vaccination is advised.
Healthy persons who have not been vaccinated or not had the disease before, but who come into contact with an infected person, can lessen the severity of the infection if they get vaccinated within the first three to five days after the exposure.