No cas­es of Hand-Foot-and-Mouth dis­ease have been found at AS­JA Pri­ma­ry School in San Fer­nan­do - al­though 42 in­di­vid­u­als were iden­ti­fied as hav­ing "gas­tro-like" symp­toms, So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Cher­rie Ann Crichlow-Cock­burn said yes­ter­day.

Ad­dress­ing Op­po­si­tion queries on the is­sue dur­ing yes­ter­day's sit­ting of the Par­lia­ment, Crichlow-Cock­burn said the school was vis­it­ed by a com­bined health care team com­pris­ing mem­bers of the Coun­ty Med­ical Of­fi­cer of Health (CMOH) Of­fice Vic­to­ria, San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion Pub­lic Health De­part­ment and the South West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA) on Thurs­day.

They iden­ti­fied in­di­vid­u­als com­plain­ing of Gas­troen­teri­tis-like symp­toms (fever, nau­sea, vom­it­ing and di­ar­rhoea) but not Hand-Foot-and-Mouth dis­ease as was re­port­ed. There were 42 in­di­vid­u­als iden­ti­fied as hav­ing Gas­troen­teri­tis-like symp­toms from the Stan­dard 1 and 2 class­es; all of whom re­port­ed the symp­toms were not se­vere and no one was hos­pi­talised," she said.

"The City Pub­lic Health De­part­ment re­port­ed that the school and en­vi­rons were clean and free of har­bourage of mos­qui­toes and ro­dents. The school has been sani­tised to rid it of po­ten­tial mi­cro­bi­o­log­i­cal pathogens."

She said as a pre­cau­tion­ary mea­sure stu­dents from the af­fect­ed class­es and their sib­lings on­ly were ad­vised to stay home Fri­day.

"Sam­pling will be con­duct­ed to iden­ti­fy a po­ten­tial mi­cro­bi­o­log­i­cal cause for this episode. Class­es are ex­pect­ed to re­sume as nor­mal on Mon­day," Crichlow-Cock­burn said.