Hand, Foot and Mouth disease is caused by a virus.
Signs and Symptoms:
Signs and Symptoms:
- Tiny blisters in the mouth and on the fingers, palms of the hands, buttocks, and soles of the feet that last longer than a week. You can have one or all of these symptoms.
- Common cold symptoms with a fever, sore throat, runny nose and cough. The most troublesome symptoms are the sores in the mouth, which make drinking and eating difficult.
- The incubation period is between 3-6 days.
- Contagious period: the virus is shed for weeks to months in the stool after the infection starts; respiratory shedding is usually between 1 to 3 weeks.
- Respiratory: when a student coughs, talks, or sneezes.
- Contact with the respiratory secretions from or objects contaminated by children who carry the virus.
- Fecal-oral-route: contact wtih feces of children who are infected. This usually involves an infected child contaminating his own fingers, then touching an object that another child touches.
- Coughing or sneezing into ones elbow or into a tissue.
- Wash hand