As expected, the pH1N1 infection rate was high among school aged children [20, 31] . Of the first 997 cases of confirmed pH1N1 infection in the state of Victoria in Australia, 67% were aged 5-17 years [32] . In Australia, school closure was intended to be associated with voluntary home quarantine. When a school -or class within a school -was closed, members of the class were asked to voluntarily quarantine themselves at home. This meant that parents of young children were frequently required to take time off work to care for children who would otherwise have been at school. Home quarantine has its own risks. We have recently shown that when an entire family was quarantined, the risk of secondary spread within households was increased by approximately 2.5-fold [33] .