MOULTRIE — The Colquitt County School System will close all schools for the rest of the week in response to multiple cases of illnesses — especially influenza, but also including strep throat and stomach virus.

Since next week was already scheduled as spring break, schools will reopen Monday, April 3.

An automated call from the school system to parents said staff would still be expected to come to work, although students would not be there. Several messages left with The Observer’s Rant and Rave column objected to that decision.

Meanwhile, some extracurricular activities have been canceled while others have not.

• The FFA plant sales planned for Thursday and Friday at Willie J. Williams Middle School and Colquitt County High School will take place, a school official said.

• The Special Olympic games scheduled for Friday have been canceled. Organizers are working to reschedule them.

• Middle school athletics — both games and practices — have been canceled.

• High school varsity and junior varsity athletics, however, will go on as scheduled.

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 Odom Elementary’s 677 students were out of school, said Suzanne Sumner, nursing supervisor for the Colquitt County School System. That statistic was incorrectly reported in Tuesday’s Moultrie Observer as belonging to another school.

Hamilton Elementary has also been hard-hit.