Seven new cases of scabies have been confirmed at four additional Harlandale Independent School District campuses, raising the total to 26 since a cluster of students and a teacher at a middle school were found to be infected last week, officials said Wednesday.

“We have had an increase in the number of scabies (cases) and the number of schools affected by scabies but we also want to reassure our parents and our community members that scabies is common,” district spokeswoman Leslie Garza said.

Nineteen cases have been confirmed at Terrell Wells Middle School since last week. This week officials found one more at Vestal Elementary School and two each at Carroll Bell Elementary School, Harlandale Middle School and McCollum High School.

Standing with doctors at a news conference, Garza said the district wants to “calm fears that this is a very serious health care epidemic or outbreak — because it’s not that.”

Many of new cases are siblings of the Terrell Wells cases, suggesting transmission of the disease is occurring off campus, she said.

Dr. Hugo Rojas, the district’s medical director, hammered home the point that Harlandale campuses are clean, that the spread of the disease is unrelated to a person’s socio-economic status or hygiene and that more work needs to be done at home, by parents.

“You have to treat all the family members, including friends that may be coming over and bringing the infection,” Rojas said. “I think that’s one thing that’s overlooked is we’re focusing so much on the schools. The problem isn’t in the schools.”

Scabies is a highly contagious skin disease caused when a parasitic mite burrows under the epidermis. It can be spread by skin-to-skin contact, an exchange of bodily fluids and contact with infected areas, doctors said.

Rojas and Dr. Anil T. Mangla, an assistant director of the San Antonio Metropolitan Health District, commended the district for being proactive. School officials have sent treatment information to parents of infected students, disinfected the Terrell Wells campus several times, and are tracking and investigating the cases.

Mangla and Rojas also declined to call the cases an “outbreak;” preferring the term “cluster.”

Mangla said health officials were partnering with the district to visit the homes of those infected. He urged parents to not allow students to share clothes, bed sheets or utensils and said precautions would include treating everyone in the home of an infected person, including house pets.

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