My friend has shingles. We've been told that the disease is contagious and that she should stay away from children and the elderly. Shingles is a contagious virus infection of the nerves in the skin. Ordinarily, shingles appears as crops of stinging blisters in a dermatome, a band-like section of skin on one side of the body. Eventually, the blisters break, leaving raw and inflamed sections of skin that can continue to cause discomfort for several weeks.
Patients are contagious primarily during the acute phase, when the blisters appear.
The virus is spread by direct contact. Pregnant women should assiduously avoid patients with the disease, because the zoster virus can enter the mother's body and infect the fetus, even if the woman herself is immune. Likewise, the elderly are more at risk because their immune systems often have weakened with age. I hope that you misunderstood the Board of Health pronouncement. Saying that shingles is caused by a nervous condition is akin to the old teaching that polio is caused by eating snow, and tuberculosis is caused by breathing in fog.