A school in the north east of Scotland has been closed for a deep clean after 53 people became ill with a vomiting bug.
Council chiefs say 40 pupils and 13 staff became unwell at Tomintoul Primary School in Moray on Tuesday morning, with at least 20 children and a number of staff calling in sick.
The vomiting outbreak is not thought to have started at the school, but at an event attended by staff and pupils in the village last weekend.
The school has been closed early for the Christmas break as a precaution while it is deep cleaned under NHS guidelines. It is expected to reopen in the new year.
A Moray Council spokesman said: "A deep clean operation is being undertaken at Tomintoul school following 40 children and 13 staff falling ill.
"The clean is a precautionary measure and is in accordance with NHS guidelines when dealing with such an outbreak."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here