12-05-2021, 07:23 PM
California parents knowingly sent their COVID positive child to school, causing outbreak
CORTE MADERA, Calif. — Northern California parents knowingly sent their COVID-19 positive child and a sibling to school last month in violation of isolation and quarantine rules, causing a coronavirus outbreak in an elementary school, officials said Saturday.
The parents could face a fine or a misdemeanor charge for violating Marin County’s health order, under which people who test positive for the virus must isolate themselves for at least 10 days.
The child tested positive for the virus during the week of Nov. 8, according to Brett Geithman, superintendent of the Larkspur-Corte Madera School District. Both children continued to attend school the rest of that week and into the following week.
The child and their sibling, who later tested positive as well, are students in the district's Neil Cummins Elementary School in Corte Madera, a town in Marin County that's 15 miles north of San Francisco.
The parents did not notify the school of the positive test or return multiple calls from public health contract tracers, Geithman told AP.
When the school's principal spoke to the family, “they had cited that they were not clear on the protocol” to isolate the child after the positive test.
Willis said language barriers or economic factors — meaning the parents could not take time off from work when the kids needed to isolate at home — did not appear to be a factor for the family.
He also said it was "quite simple” for people to know not to send their children to school if they test positive for the virus.
The district immediately contacted the families of students who were exposed and told them to report to the school for rapid testing the next morning.
A total of eight students tested positive: The original student, their sibling, three classmates of theirs who are suspected school-based transmissions and three students who are suspected household transmissions. None of the students experienced serious illness or had to be hospitalized.
About 75 students were exposed to the virus from the eight cases, the superintendent said. No staff members tested positive.
Schools have an indoor mask mandate.
“Had those children been unmasked, we would have seen a lot more transmission,” Willis said. “We depend on one another to prevent spread and this is kind of a stark and unfortunate lesson in what happens when we don’t follow the protocols."
https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nati...879525002/
