Cold and flu season has fallen upon Washington and it shows no signs of stopping. In fact, the flu epidemic has started to even take a death toll on Washingtonians all around and there hasn’t really been a provided cure except take medicine, rest and drink the right fluids.

The months of October-January are always known as “flu season”. With kids going back to school and parents going back to work, a new virus or illness is bound to get caught between everyone and slowly spread from person to person.

All around the United States, everyone everywhere was getting sick. In the South, so many kids had a severe case of the flu, that it caused multiple schools to shutdown to prevent anymore catching this virus, and Washington is no different . Like many other states, this Evergreen state was hit with a insane flu epidemic this year. So many as 24 deaths due to influenza were recorded to end 2016, and the count of many still severely sick keeps rising from every patient that comes into the emergency room.

“We see about 20 to 30 kids lately, a day” Nurse Dermont, the assistant nurse at the Lake Stevens High School health room. Just like emergency rooms, Lake Stevens High School health room is swamped daily with ill kids coming in and leaving to go home, to sick to continue. “I worked in a clinic before the school,” Head Nurse Heather Smith  comments at  Lake Stevens High School “Technically, it’s the most kids I’ve ever seen so sick.”

And with the end of the year already coming to a close and last minute tests are right around the corner,  it would be best if kids stayed home to not spread anymore sickness around campus and to get better themselves, right?

Precautions you can take if you’re wondering on whether you should stay home or not, “if you have a fever or you’re vomiting you need to stay home until your [fever or vomit] free for 24 hrs.” Nurse Dermont says, “If you can make it through the day with your symptoms, according to attendance, try unless you have those two things.”

We all hope this flu epidemic will pass as soon as possible, but until it does, make sure you’re healthy first before anything else.