HCA Florida Memorial Hospital<\/a> in Jacksonville, says schools typically see a spike in sick kids right at the start of the school year. She says certain symptoms should signal parents to keep children home.<\/p>\n\u201cIf a child has a fever for 24 hours and it\u2019s not going away with Tylenol or Motrin, you need to bring them to the ER, keep them home and see if that fever is going away,\u201d she said. \u201cIf the child is coughing a lot, they\u2019re spreading the germs.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dr. Amin says to also watch out for the child being tired, lethargic and experiencing diarrhea as other signs to keep the kids home.<\/p>\n
She also offers several practical tips for keeping the whole family healthy. Washing hands for at least 20 seconds, using alcohol-based hand sanitizers, keeping distance from people who are sick and wearing a mask can all help limit the spread of illness.<\/p>\n
She acknowledges, however, that getting kids to follow those guidelines is easier said than done.<\/p>\n
\u201cKids are kids, right? They\u2019re not going to stay away from their sick friend because they want to play with them,\u201d she said. \u201cBut it\u2019s good that you have a conversation with them and say, \u2018Hey, we want to keep you safe, so if your little buddy is coughing, you might not want to play with them on the playground, kind of stay away from them.\u201d<\/p>\n
For parents, Dr. Amin says exposure to whatever the kids bring home is sometimes unavoidable. But consistent habits \u2014 washing hands, sanitizing surfaces and wearing masks when needed \u2014 remain good practices to keep up throughout the house.<\/p>\n
Copyright 2026 by WJXT News4JAX – All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"JACKSONVILLE, Fla. \u2013 As fall approaches, so does the season for viruses and illness \u2014 and for parents,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":410163,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[1039,40685,10114,571,61569,116,118,117],"class_list":["post-410162","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-jacksonville","tag-duval-county","tag-flu","tag-hca-florida-memorial-hospital","tag-health","tag-healthier-tomorrow","tag-jacksonville","tag-jacksonville-headlines","tag-jacksonville-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410162","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=410162"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/410162\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/410163"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=410162"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=410162"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=410162"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}