A Massachusetts family sent their child to school knowing that he or she had tested positive for the novel coronavirus, leading to about 30 teenagers having to quarantine, CNN reports.
What’s going on?
Attleboro High School Superintendent David Sawyer sent a letter to families Tuesday night that revealed a student with a positive COVID-19 test attended school Monday, according to NBC Boston.
- The school didn’t learn this until Tuesday.
- The school asked 28 students who had contact with the infected person to go into quarantine for two weeks.
Attleboro Mayor Paul Heroux told CNN that school officials were shocked by the decision.
- He said the parents told him the child tested positive around Sept. 11. The parents thought the child could rejoin school after several days of quarantine.
- “The parents used very poor judgment, it’s very frustrating,” Heroux said. “The school department did everything they were supposed to do.”
Sawyer told NBC Boston that the school’s safety precautions “ultimately designed to prevent the spread of the virus under these precise circumstances.”
- “The guidance from the state cannot ensure a virus-free environment, especially considering we know that some carriers are asymptomatic,” Sawyer said. “We will have to wait for the end of the quarantines to be certain we were successful, but there is no reason at this moment to assume differently.”
Why this matters:
The situation at Attleboro High School is happening as the rest of the country struggles to deal with how to bring children back to school amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Dr. Mike Ryan, executive director of the World Health Organization’s health emergencies program, said on Tuesday countries might need to pick between reopening bars or schools if they want to keep people safe, which I wrote for Deseret.com.
- “We have to sustain pressure on this virus, we have to reduce transmission at community level in order to lower the risk to those older and vulnerable people and to maintain an environment in which our children can continue to attend school.”