Shawnigan Lake School brass are waiting until Monday to declare all quiet on the swine-flu front after a recent outbreak of the H1N1 virus.

Headmaster David Robertson initially said last week one student was tested and confirmed with influenza A while other students came down with fevers and flu symptoms.

While that Grade 12 pupil is fine now, lab tests eventually confirmed he had had the H1N1 bug known as swine flu.

Robertson explained the flu spread through the private school, infecting some 90 kids in the past 10 days.

That lead him and medical officials to deduce swine flu is the culprit at SLS.

“They said it was influenza A but needed to further test for H1N1, and influenza A is a precursor to H1N1.

“Virtually all experienced the same symptoms and fever, and I’d say, as an amateur physician, it was H1N1.

“That’s what our school doctor says too.”

All students who had the flu are fine now, he said, barring a few new cases late last week.

“We’ve still got seven or eight kids under the weather.”

Students were initially swabbed to test for swine flu, but once cases loads climbed, swabbing wasn’t prescribed.

“When we got the first H1N1 results we immediately swabbed another three kids. “The Vancouver Island Health Authority said not to swab all of them because they wouldn’t be able to cope.

“It’s obvious if you’ve got six kids with the flu all (living) in the same area, it’s unlikely only one has H1N1 and the others have other types of flu,” he said.

“Touch wood, I haven’t had it yet.”

Meanwhile, SLS’s flu plans restricting outside visitors, sterilizing school surfaces, and demanding hand washing and Purell-gel use “has worked remarkably fine.”

“VIHA is also very interested because we’re an early occurrence in a tight community,” Robertson said.

“Hopefully we’ll have dispelled some of the fear around H1N1.

“For most young people who’ve had it, the two dominant things are that it spreads quickly and comes on quite strong but after two days a lot of pupils feel fine.”

He called SLS’s incident an outbreak.

“It’s not quite the scary flu virus we were all fearing and dreading but that doesn’t mean we can treat it lightly.”