How long is a child contagious after hand foot and mouth disease

Causes & Transmission of Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease

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Hand, foot, and mouth disease spreads easily through

Person-to-person contact
Respiratory droplets containing virus particles when an infected person coughs or sneezes
Contact with contaminated surfaces and objects

Hand, foot, and mouth disease is contagious

Hand, foot, and mouth disease is caused by viruses. A person infected with one of these viruses is contagious, which means that they can pass the virus to other people.

The virus can spread to others through an infected person’s

Nose and throat secretions, such as saliva, drool, or nasal mucus
Fluid from blisters or scabs
Feces (poop)

People with hand, foot, and mouth disease are usually most contagious during the first week that they are sick. People can sometimes spread the virus to others for days or weeks after symptoms go away or if they have no symptoms at all.

How it spreads

You can get hand, foot, and mouth disease by

Contact with respiratory droplets containing virus particles after a sick person coughs or sneezes
Touching an infected person or making other close contact, like kissing, hugging, or sharing cups or eating utensils
Touching an infected person’s feces, such as changing diapers, then touching your eyes, nose, or mouth
Touching objects and surfaces that have the virus on them, like doorknobs or toys, then touching your eyes, nose, or mouth

Rarely, you can also get the viruses by swallowing recreational water, such as water in swimming pools. This can happen if the water is not properly treated with chlorine and becomes contaminated with feces from a person who has hand, foot, and mouth disease.

Hand, Foot, and Mouth Disease is Common

HFMD is common and in the U.S. occurs mostly in the summer and fall, but you can get it any time of year.

Because it is common and usually mild, children can continue to go to child care and schools as long as they:

Have no fever.
Have no uncontrolled drooling with mouth sores.
Feel well enough to participate in classroom activities.

Talk with your child’s healthcare provider if you are still not sure when it is okay for them to return. In some cases, the local health department may require children with HFMD to stay home to control an outbreak.

Viruses that cause hand, foot, and mouth disease

Hand, foot, and mouth disease is caused by viruses that belong to the Enterovirus family.

Common causes of hand, foot, and mouth disease are:

Coxsackievirus A16 is typically the most common cause of hand, foot, and mouth disease in the United States. Other coxsackieviruses can also cause the illness.
Coxsackievirus A6 can also cause HFMD and the symptoms may be more severe.
Enterovirus 71 (EV-A71) has been associated with cases and outbreaks in East and Southeast Asia. Although rare, EV-A71 has been associated with more severe diseases such as encephalitis (swelling of the brain).

Animals do not get hand, foot, and mouth disease

Animals such as cattle, pigs, sheep, and goats can get foot and mouth disease (or hoof-and-mouth disease), which is different than hand, foot, and mouth disease.

Visit the USDA website to learn more about foot and mouth disease.

Prevent HFMD from spreading

Learn more

Hand, Foot & Mouth Disease: Parent FAQs

Hand, foot, and mouth disease is a common childhood virus that pediatricians, child care centers and preschools see in summer and early fall.

Most parents want to know what exactly hand, foot, and mouth disease is, how to help their child cope with the discomfort it causes, and most of all when their child can go back to child care or school. Read on for answers to these and more frequently asked questions.

What is hand, foot, and mouth disease?

Despite its scary name, hand, foot, and mouth disease is a common, contagious illness caused by different viruses. It typically affects infants and children under age 5, but older kids and adults can catch it as well.

What are the signs and symptoms?

From the time the child is exposed to hand, foot, and mouth disease, it takes 3 to 6 days for the first symptoms to show up. This is called the incubation period. It usually starts with a fever, sore throat, and runny nose—much like the common cold—but then a rash with tiny blisters may start to show up on the following body sites:

In the mouth

On the inner cheeks
Gums
Sides of the tongue
Top of the mouth

Fingers
Palms of hands
Soles of feet
Buttocks

Note: One, few, or all of these body sites may have blisters.

Symptoms are the worst in the first few days but are usually completely gone within a week. Peeling of the fingers and toes after 1 to 2 weeks can happen, but it is harmless.

How is hand, foot, and mouth disease diagnosed?

Your pediatrician can tell if your child has hand, foot, and mouth disease based on the symptoms you describe and by looking at your child's mouth sores and rash. Depending on how severe your child's symptoms are, your pediatrician may collect samples from your child's throat send them to a lab for testing.

If your child is diagnosed with hand, foot, and mouth disease, make sure to inform your child's child care provider or school. They may need to inform other parents and staff members about watching for symptoms.

What is the treatment?

There isn't any medicine to treat or cure hand, foot, and mouth disease. The only thing parents can do is ease the fever and pain with acetaminophen or ibuprofen. Call your pediatrician if your child's fever lasts more than 3 days or if he or she is not drinking fluids.

For mouth pain:

In children over age 1 year, parents can consult with their doctor as a variety of liquid mouth-soothing remedies may be useful to alleviate mouth ulcer pain. Do not use regular mouth washes, because they sting.

Avoid dehydration:

Children with hand, foot, and mouth disease need to drink plenty of fluids. Call your pediatrician now or go to the ER if you suspect your child is dehydrated. See Signs of Dehydration in Infants & Children for more information.

How long is it contagious?

You are generally most contagious during the first week of illness. But, children with hand, foot, and mouth disease may shed the virus from the respiratory tract (nose, mouth and lungs) for 1-3 weeks and in the stool for weeks to months after the infection starts.

How is hand, foot, and mouth disease spread?

The virus causing hand, foot, and mouth disease is usually spread through person-to-person contact in different ways:

Respiratory route:

Contact with large droplets that form when a child talks, coughs, or sneezes. These droplets can land on or be rubbed into the eyes, nose, or mouth. Most of these droplets do not stay in the air; usually, they travel no more than 3 feet and fall onto the ground.

Fecal-oral route:

Contact with stool of children who are infected. This generally involves a sick child dirtying his own fingers and then touching an object that another child touches. The child who touched the contaminated surface then puts her fingers into her own mouth.

How can I help prevent and control the spread of hand, foot, and mouth disease?

Teach your children to cover their mouths and noses when sneezing or coughing with a disposable tissue, if possible, or with an arm sleeve if no tissue is available. Teach everyone to wash their hands right after using tissues or having contact with mucus. Change or cover contaminated clothing.
Wash your hands after changing diapers. Parents can spread the virus to other surfaces by coming in contact with any feces, blister fluid or saliva.
Clean, rinse, and sanitize toys that may have come in contact with your child's saliva.
Prevent sharing of food, drinks, and personal items that may touch your child's mouth, such as eating utensils, toothbrushes, and towels.
Protect other children in the house. Make sure they do not come in close contact with the child who is infected. Kissing, hugging, and sharing cups and utensils can spread the infection quickly. If your children share a room, separate them while the sick child is contagious.
Disinfect any surfaces your child touches frequently—this may be helpful to prevent a sibling from getting hand, foot, and mouth disease (and it is doable if you're are careful about cleaning surfaces).

Can my child go to school or child care with hand, foot, and mouth disease?

Yes, except for when:

The child is not feeling well enough to participate in class or has a fever.
The teacher or child care provider feels he or she cannot take care of the child without compromising care for the other children in the class. Excessive drooling from mouth sores might be a problem that people find difficult to manage.
The child has many open blisters. It usually takes about 7 days for the blisters to dry up.
The child meets other exclusion criteria.

Note: Exclusion from child care or school will not reduce the spread of hand, foot, and mouth disease because children can spread the virus even if they have no symptoms and the virus may be present in the stool for weeks after the symptoms are gone

When can my child go back to school or child care?

A child can return to school or child care after all of the exclusion criteria (listed above) are resolved and the child feels well enough to participate. Talk with your child's pediatrician if you are not sure when your child should return to school or child care.

If my child has already had hand, foot, and mouth disease can he or she get it again?

Yes. A child can have repeat infections with the same type of virus or different viruses that cause hand, foot, and mouth disease.

Additional Information & Resources:

Preventing the Spread of Illness in Child Care or School
Germ Prevention Strategies
The Healthy Children Show: Fever (Video)
Hand, Foot & Mouth Disease (CDC.gov)

The information contained on this Web site should not be used as a substitute for the medical care and advice of your pediatrician. There may be variations in treatment that your pediatrician may recommend based on individual facts and circumstances.

Foot and mouth disease - Symptoms, treatment - Medical reference book AMK

Adamant
medical clinic

St. Petersburg, embankment of the river Moika, 78.

+7 (812) 740-20-90

Content:

FMD is a viral disease transmitted to humans from an infected animal. Pathology is manifested by severe intoxication of the body and the appearance of painful ulcerations on the mucous membranes of all parts of the body. Also, vesicular-ulcerative rashes occur on the skin between the fingers and around the nails.

The causative agent of foot-and-mouth disease is a virus of the Piconavirus family. This is a highly pathogenic microorganism that staunchly withstands freezing, but dies when treated with disinfectants and when heated above 60 degrees.

Foot and mouth disease is a disease that most often affects animals (pigs, goats, sheep, deer and cows). Sometimes even domestic dogs and cats can become infected with this disease. Often this pathology causes a mass fall of livestock.

People become infected with foot-and-mouth disease most often by consuming unpasteurized milk, cottage cheese, kefir, or raw meat from infected animals. However, it is possible to transmit the infection through contact and through household items. Children are more sensitive to the pathogen. A sick person is not dangerous to others.

How does foot and mouth disease manifest itself?

From the period of infection to the appearance of clinical signs, as a rule, a week passes. The onset of the disease is marked by the following signs:

high temperature;
painful sensations in the muscles;
characteristic itching and burning in the oral cavity;
strong salivation;
redness of the eyes;
painful sensation when urinating;
diarrhea.

When examining a patient, the doctor determines swelling and redness of the tongue, soft palate and palatine arches. There is an increase in lymph nodes. After a while, small bubbles appear on the mucous membranes. Then they open up and form erosions that merge with each other. These affected areas cause severe discomfort. Patients cannot speak or swallow.

Similar symptoms are characterized by damage to other mucous membranes of the body. From other diseases, foot and mouth disease is distinguished by rashes between the fingers and in the folds of the legs and arms.

The acute period of the disease lasts an average of a week. In children, the pathology is accompanied by nausea and diarrhea.

FMD treatment

If a diagnosis of foot and mouth disease has been established, patients are admitted to the hospital for at least 2 weeks. The doctor prescribes a diet that excludes mechanical and chemical irritation of the affected areas of the mucosa. Also, patients are shown to drink plenty of fluids. If a sick person is not able to swallow food, feeding is carried out through a tube.

Of the drugs, antiviral, sometimes antiallergic, painkillers and supporting the cardiovascular system are shown. Wounds on mucous membranes are treated with creams and gels that accelerate regeneration.

FMD prevention

To avoid infection in endemic areas, strict personal safety rules should be followed.

Mandatory requirements are:

boiling milk;
production of cottage cheese, butter and other products only from processed raw materials;
heat treatment of meat.

FMD and its prevention

FMD (aphthous fever, epizootic stomatitis) is an acute infectious disease of animals, mainly cattle, goats and pigs, manifested in fever and the formation of a rash in the form of blisters (aft) on the oral mucosa and on the skin in the area of the hooves. The most susceptible to the disease are young animals, in which foot-and-mouth disease is severe, with mass death. This disease can be widespread among animals in the form of epizootics. Human disease with foot-and-mouth disease occurs only in the form of isolated cases and does not take on an epidemic distribution among people, since human susceptibility to foot-and-mouth disease is low. FMD is not transmitted from person to person.

Animals resistant to foot and mouth disease, such as dogs, cats, horses, and sometimes chickens, ducks, geese, sparrows and other birds, can also carry the infection. From wild animals sick with foot-and-mouth disease: saigas, wild boars, moose and other artiodactyl animals.

FMD has been known on earth since time immemorial. It is distributed in all countries of the world. In Russia, foot-and-mouth disease among animals has been recorded since 1881.

Exciter. The RNA-containing virus is very sensitive to heat: it dies within 5 minutes in milk at 100°C, and within 30 minutes when milk is pasteurized at 70°C. In sausages, it lasts up to 50 days, in frozen meat - up to 1 year. In the dried state, the virus can remain alive for quite a long time, for example, on fodder for up to 3-6 months, on animal hair - up to 4 weeks, on clothes, shoes, wheel tires - up to 3.5 months. It remains viable for a long time when wet. So, in slurry it lasts up to a month, in frozen manure - up to 1 year, on pastures and in haystacks in autumn and winter - up to 6 months.

The virus enters the human body through the digestive tract (oral cavity) with milk and dairy products; possible infection through microtrauma of the skin in contact with sick animals and animal products (skin, wool, meat, blood).

Foot-and-mouth disease in humans occurs as a general disease. More often, after 3-5 days that have passed since the moment of infection (incubation period from 1 to 12 days), the disease begins with general malaise, headache, pain in the sacrum, chills, and sometimes vomiting.

The temperature soon reaches 38-39.5°C. Red spots appear on the mucous membrane of the oral cavity (more often on the tongue), then bubbles with cloudy yellowish contents that spread to the mucous membranes of the lips, cheeks, and gums. The blisters then burst and turn into painful sores (erosions). The submandibular glands enlarge, the lips swell, the gums become covered with a white coating, there is profuse salivation and bad breath.

Less commonly, bubbles form on the skin of the hands and in the area of the nail bed, on the flexor surfaces of the fingers, on the lower leg, forearm, on the mucous membranes of the nose, pharynx, vagina, urethra, sometimes on the skin of the mammary glands (in women). In most cases, the disease is accompanied by gastrointestinal disorders. The illness lasts 15-18 days and is usually mild.

The transferred disease leaves behind a short-term, usually up to one and a half years, immunity (immunity) in relation to the virus of the type by which the disease was caused. Repeated cases of the disease several times in a row are possible due to the difference in the types of foot-and-mouth disease virus.

The source of infection for humans are domestic animals sick with foot and mouth disease: cattle, goats, sheep, pigs. They shed the virus in saliva, urine, feces, and mainly milk. The incubation period in animals ranges from 1 to 21 days. The blood and meat of sick animals is contagious. FMD is transmitted from one animal to another by direct contact, through infected forage, since the virus can remain on objects for a long time, and most importantly by airborne dust.

Milk and dairy products are the main route of infection for humans. In cattlemen, veterinarians, milkmaids, the disease often occurs as a result of direct contact with sick animals.

If there is no foot-and-mouth disease among animals, it is not among people either. Therefore, measures to control and prevent foot-and-mouth disease in animals protect people from the disease. When foot and mouth disease appears, sick animals are killed and burned, which eliminates the source of infection. In the focus of infection, all garbage, garbage, and leftover food should be carefully collected and burned. Stalls and especially feeders are well disinfected. With the threat of foot and mouth disease, animals are vaccinated, and they become immune to the disease. The farm where foot-and-mouth disease is registered is quarantined, disinfected, and stray dogs and cats are destroyed.

The Department of Rosselkhoznadzor in the Republic of Tatarstan draws the attention of citizens to the fact that the main rule for the prevention of foot-and-mouth disease among people is the exclusion of the use of unprocessed milk and butter in all areas where cases of foot-and-mouth disease have been recorded among animals.