Numerous Tennessee School Districts Closed Due to Illness

More than a dozen Tennessee school districts were closed yesterday, and several remain closed today, due to widespread illness, Fox Channel 17 news reports.

School district officials authorized the closures to allow students to recover and to give custodians extra time to clean and disinfect classrooms. The affected school districts are in Humphreys, Lincoln, Maury, Overton, Putnam, Robertson, Stewart, and Wilson counties as well as in the city of Tullahoma.

A spokesman for Wilson County schools confirmed that 10% of the student and teacher population had been sick with the flu and another unidentified illness. According to the Tennessee Health Department, eight children have died from the flu in Tennessee.

According to the latest, Weekly Influenza Surveillance Report from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), 68 influenza-associated deaths in children have been reported so far this season. The CDC estimates that there have been at least 19 million flu illnesses, 180,000 hospitalizations and 10,000 deaths, from the flu to date.