“It’s important to wash your hands before and after you eat, it’s important to wash your hands after you go to the bathroom,” said Mary Suzanne Whitworth, M.D., medical director of Infectious Diseases at Cook Children's. “Remember to do that with soap and water for 20 seconds. If you can’t use water, use hand gel.”

She adds handwashing is critical after you touch surfaces you share with other people.

“Handwashing with soap and water can prevent 1 in 3 people from getting sick with diarrhea and 1 in 5 people from getting a respiratory illness,” chief of the Waterborne Disease Prevention Branch of the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Vincent Hill, said in an interview with CNN. "That is why handwashing is so important, especially at key times such as after using the bathroom, when preparing food, before eating, and after coughing, sneezing, or blowing your nose."

This year's theme of Global Handwashing Day, Hand Hygiene for All, calls for universal hand hygiene to beat the virus today and ensure better health outcomes beyond the pandemic.

"This day is an opportunity to design, test and replicate creative ways to encourage people to wash their hands with soap at critical times," the Global Handwashing Partnership noted. "After all, this simple behavior can save lives. For children, handwashing can cut diarrhea by almost one-half and acute respiratory infections by nearly one-quarter."

An easy way to help your children wash their hands properly is to pick a song to sing, like happy birthday, while they scrub.

“Keep yourselves safe. Help us prevent the spread of coronavirus that causes COVID disease and help us prevent the spread of influenza,” said Dr. Whitworth.

As of Oct. 12, the number of patients who have tested positive reached 1,657, with four of those patients currently in the hospital.

Pediatric cases of COVID-19 have been climbing along with overall cases in Tarrant County. On Sunday, Tarrant County Public Health reported an ‘uptick’ with 794 new cases.

“I’ve been asked frequently about the number of infected children, as well as the number of infected adults locally and throughout the state. We’ve noticed over the last couple of weeks that we’ve had more positive cases here,” said Mary Suzanne Whitworth, M.D., medical director of Infectious Diseases at Cook Children's. “Part of the reason we have more cases here is because we are doing more testing. If you double the amount of testing you do, you would expect to double your number of positive results. If you more than double your number of positive results, that means there’s more disease in the community.”

Cook Children’s COVID-19 positivity rate was near 2.5% in August. Today, our overall positivity rate is 5.3%. Dr. Whitworth says that rate is in line with statewide and national data for children. She says throughout the pandemic, less than 10% of all COVID-19 cases occurred in children under 15 years old.

“It is disturbing that our percent positivity rate is going up, and we also see that in Tarrant County,” she said. “Tarrant County is hovering around 10% positivity rate, while the state has dropped to around 7%.”

There are a number of reasons why this may be occurring, including people going out more and becoming tired of wearing masks and social distancing. She also says there are some cases at schools, but those haven’t been tremendous numbers.

So what can you do to protect yourself and your family?

• Wash your hands often, for 20 seconds with soap and water, or use hand sanitizer.
• Keep at least six feet away from others.
• Wear a mask.
• When around others, remember being outdoors is safer than indoors.

“As the holidays approach, I have wrestled with how to handle this and I know everyone else is wrestling with it too,” she said. “It’s going to be difficult to not be involved in crowded gatherings, but they’re not going to be very safe this year. Those are some of the things I think we can do.”

She says another important way to protect yourself and your family is to get a flu shot.

“There are decades of safety data with flu shots. They are safe. You can’t get the flu from a flu shot. You might be a little achy afterwards, but that beats having the flu where you might be in bed for a week with high fever and miss work or miss school.”

Kids are gross.

Germs and kids are doubly gross.

As parents, we know this is true, especially during this time of year. The illness visits are piling up in my office and throughout the Cook Children's system. The days off school are starting. Missed workdays are causing stress.

We all hate this part of winter.

In my office, we're seeing lots of barky coughs from croup. We've also seen a ton of kids with sore throats from strep and viruses. Lots of fever from ear infections and flu season is just around the corner.

So what do you do? How do you survive the winter and keep your child healthy?

There's no magic vitamin. There's no magical food. There's no magical anything.

But here's something you can do: teach them not to be (as) gross.

1. Kids, stop licking and chewing stuff: Not the table, not your clothes, not your friends. There is nothing you can lick except your food, and really, you should chew it.
2. Kids, wash your hands. Several times a day. Wash them after you eat. Wash them after you go to the bathroom. Wash them just because you need to wash your hands. Get those germs off.
3. Kids, cough into the crook of your elbow. Don't cough on your classmates or your teacher (this isn't going to get you out of a test). Don't cough into your hands because then you will be spreading germs around the next time you touch someone or hand something to a classmate or sibling. 
4. Kids quit sucking your snot back up into your nose. You're driving us all crazy and making us all nauseous. It's disgusting. Really. And it's also bad for you. Get that crud out of your nose and out of your body.
5. Kids, stay home from school if you're sick. If you have a fever, it's not allergies, and no, you can't take Motrin on your way into school to make it through the day. (Ok, kids. This one was more for your parents.)

I'm sure there's more. What other lessons should we teach our kids so they won't be as gross this winter?

Stay well,

Doc Smitty