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Chicken pox health advice The chickenpox infection, caused by the varicella-zoster virus, is extremely common and affects almost all children at some stage. Unlike a lot of other diseases with chickenpox children can deal with the disease much more easily and it is a relatively non worrying illness for kids, but there can be complications for adults. This is because the immune system produces certain antibodies during the course of infection, which not only fight against the immediate threat of the virus, but also provide immunity for life.
For this reason it is rare to have more than one outbreak of the infection and for the same reason it is much better that a child gets the infection while still young rather than as an adult.
The virus is extremely infectious and can be passed on very easily. The incubation period is around eleven to twenty days, during which there are no visible symptoms. The rash and blisters then appear and can even be accompanied by fever, cold, sore throats, etc. The disease infectious from around two to four days before the appearance of the rash and it remains infectious till all the spots or blisters have crusted over, which generally takes five to six days.
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