Chickenpox / Varicella

Chicken Pox is also known as Varicella is an acute and highly contagious disease. People who have never had chickenpox can get infected just by being in a room with someone who has the disease. If one member in the family gets chickenpox, he usually will infect another family member unless precautions are taken.

A person who gets infected will take 14 to 21 days before the chickenpox rash starts appearing on him. Once infected the person can infect another person from up to 48 hours before the initial rash and remains infective until all the blisters have burst all the crusts have disappeared. The chickenpox from an infected person spreads by -

Airborne droplets that are spayed when they cough or sneeze

Direct contact with discharge from the blisters of the skin

Coming in contact with Herpes or Shingles infection

The most common cause of infection is through the respiratory droplets that are inhaled by another person.

Everyone who has not had the disease is at risk of getting it; if they come in contact with an infected person. It affects all races and both sexes are equally prone to it.

This viral disease is characterized by dry itching (pruritus) and a skin rash with fluid-filled blisters that burst and form crusts. The onset of the chickenpox rash may be preceded by a day of mild fever and weakness. The infectious period lasts from about three days before the rash appears until all the blisters have formed scabs.

Chicken Pox and its Stages


Most children have been infected with the virus by the age of 10. After infection, lifelong immunity against recurrent infection is usually present.

The Varicella Zoster virus of chickenpox can also cause 'Herpes Zoster or Shingles.' Normally once the chickenpox infection settles down the virus rests in the roots of the ganglia next to the spinal cord and becomes dormant or inactive. However sometimes the virus may suddenly later in life decide to become active again and can cause the painful lesions of Shingles.

These pocks break out in many without any illness or previous sign: in others they are preceded by a little degree of chillness, lassitude, cough, disturbed sleep, wandering pains, loss of appetite, and feverishness for three days. On the first day of the eruption they are reddish. On the second day there is at the top of most of the a very small bladder, about the size of a millet-seed. -William Heberden, 1802.