Four illnesses surge as school year begins; parents report early sick children

Children are experiencing illness-related school absences and health disruptions at the start of the academic year.

Each autumn, the return to school marks not only an academic beginning but a biological one — and this year, that reckoning arrived early. Across the country, four illnesses are moving swiftly through classrooms barely a week into the new school year, as the familiar conditions of close quarters, shared surfaces, and shifting seasonal air conspire to accelerate transmission. Health officials are tracking the spike as something measurable and real, a reminder that the gathering of children is always, in part, a gathering of what they carry. Families are navigating the disruption now, with the u

Four illnesses surge as school year begins; parents report early sick children

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