Communicable Disease in Schools

  • The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) have identified some communicable diseases that health care providers, including nurses, must report to the state or local health department.
  • Due to the immediate threat posed by some diseases, the diseases listed that are to be immediately reported (within three hours) and those to be reported within 24 hours should be reported by school nurses within those time frames as soon as notified by a parent or the student's health care provider that the disease is present or suspected.
  • Any schools located in Chicago MUST report to any of these reportable conditions to CDPH
    • If your school is not located in Chicago, please report to your local health authority.
  • Please review all the IDPH requirements for communicable disease reporting

Learn more here

  • There are many situations that are not covered in this section.
    • There is a LOT of information on the CDC and IDPH about communicable diseases. We have worked to curate some of that information on this site for Chicago schools.
    • If you have questions about medication administration or other school nursing questions, please review the ISBE site.
    • The school nursing is directed by the Illinois Nurse Practice Act in which schools are considered a community setting.
    • Pediatric vaccines are VITAL in keeping schools healthy. Learn more about state vaccine requirements here.
  • Some general rules of thumb
    • People must be at least 24 hours fever free (without the use of fever reducing medications) before returning to school.
    • People must at least 24 hours after their last episode of vomiting and/or diarrhea before returning to school, though 48 hours is preferred.

Reporting Cases

General Resources

Webinars
Norovirus webinar recording (March 2023)

Communicable Diseases in Schools

For all reportable communicable diseases (other than TB) please call (312) 746-6015, email us at SchoolsCD@cityofchicago.org or complete this REDcap Form.

  • If multiple COVID cases are reported, please use this line list:  COVIDLineListSY22-23
  • If multiple cases of another communicable disease are reported, please use this line list:  CDLineListSY22-23
  • If you need to report a case of active TB disease, please reach out to (312)-743-9000
  • If you are calling about ANY disease after hours, please call 311 ask for the communicable disease medical director on-call.

If you are part of Chicago Public Schools, please follow the internal protocol for reporting.

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