KNOXVILLE, Tenn. — Six school districts in East Tennessee closed because students and staff were sick on Friday.
Anderson, Blount, Campbell, Cocke, Union County and Rogersville City schools closed. Anderson, Blount, Campbell and Cocke County schools announced they would close on Monday, too.
The Anderson County Schools director of communications, Ryan Sutton, said the school district decided to close because of the number of students and teachers who were sick.
"We were not going to be able to staff the instructional positions at the school due to illness," Sutton said.
Dr. R. Michael Green is a family practitioner and an Emergency Room physician at the East Tennessee Children's Hospital.
He said doctors are seeing many respiratory viruses in children including different coronaviruses, adenovirus and rhino/enterovirus. Dr. Green also said doctors are seeing patients with strep throat and stomach bugs.
"That's kind of a potpourri of yucky stuff that we get in kids and adults," Dr. Green said.
However, this is not out of the ordinary, Dr. Green said. COVID-19 precautions slowed the spread of other illnesses, but now parents are seeing them reemerge.
"As we got back into normal routines, kids started getting sick again," said Dr. Green. "The average kid will get eight or nine colds a year."
Dr. Green said the best advice is to stay home if you're sick and drink plenty of fluids. He also said to monitor your temperature.
"If you're 101, you've got a fever," Dr. Green said. "If you have a fever for a couple of days, you should probably get checked out."
You can find a live list of school closings online, at WBIR's website.