MOULTRIE, Ga. — Colquitt County Schools officials will take stock of flu numbers today before meeting to decide whether to close its campuses for the remainder of the week.

If the schools do close, students will get an early start on spring break, which was already scheduled for all of next week.

The late-season flu outbreak has struck children in younger grades at a higher rate than is normally the case, according to the Southwest Health District Office in Albany.

Between March 13 and Sunday, Colquitt Regional Medical Center confirmed 104 cases of flu through testing, said Emily Watson, the hospital’s marketing director. Most of those have involved people between the ages of 5 and 17.

The total number who have tested positive for flu since Feb. 13 is 296.

“Elementary-age students are especially being hit hard,” said Carolyn Maschke, public information officer for the health district.

On Thursday, 39 percent of Hamilton Elementary’s 677 students were out of school, said Suzanne Sumner, nursing supervisor for the Colquitt County School System. The number of absences have dropped to about half of what they were at that peak.

“Last week we had two schools that were really hit hard,” she said. “At the rest of the schools it was like normal flu season.”

The other school with unusually high numbers of sick students was Odom Elementary. The rate of absences there had not improved on Monday in such a positive direction as at Hamilton.

Not all of the illnesses are attributable to influenza, Sumner said. Students also have been sickened by strep throat and stomach viruses.

“Some students are even testing positive for (both) flu and strep,” she said.

Health officials urged parents to keep their children home when they are displaying flu symptoms. That is especially true after another person in the home has had the flu.

The rule of thumb is to stay home a minimum of 24 hours, and preferably 48 hours, without having symptoms or fever while not taking medicines before returning to work or school, Maschke said.

The agency does not make recommendations on school closings, she said.

“If you close one school, it doesn’t do much of anything to slow down the spread of something as (contagious) as the flu,” Maschke said, because students in other schools are likely to have sick siblings at home.

If the system decides closing down is the best option, it would be more effective to close down all of the schools, she said.

A number of other school systems have been hit by high flu numbers, Maschke said, including Dougherty, Early and Lee counties.

“Unfortunately, Colquitt County is not alone in this,” she said.

Officials in Colquitt County did have a conference call on Monday that included Sumner, said Schools Superintendent Doug Howell, who also was in on the call.

“We had some schools that were a lot better today,” he said. “Hamilton was better; Odom was better, but not by much.”

The team plans to get Tuesday attendance numbers and meet at about 9 a.m. to go over the situation, Howell said. At that time they should have a handle on whether it is a tipping point — either that flu cases are not dropping considerably or that they have peaked and are going down.

“We’ll make the decision in the morning about the rest of the week,” Howell said. “We’re going to look at the numbers in the morning and see if numbers are up.”

He expects to announce a decision before noon.