The Orange County Health Department has given an order to 220 students at Carrboro Elementary School to take a course of antibiotics to protect themselves from whooping cough after students at the school were diagnosed with the disease.
Letters were sent home with the students last week notifying parents of their children’s exposure to students who were infected with whooping cough. Parents were notified that students would be excluded from school for 21 days, beginning Feb. 16, if they did not obtain the antibiotics.
As of Feb. 16, nine of the 220 students were not in school, but officials contacted the students’ families, who all indicated they were in the process of scheduling doctor appointments and obtaining prescriptions with the intent to return to school.