Marine research on COVID outbreaks in schools attracts national interests

Marin’s public health researchers took advantage of the Novat School’s major coronavirus outbreak earlier this year to upgrade county-wide safety guidance for the 2021-22 academic year.

NS Outbreak, Our Lady of Loretto School, a private elementary school, is considered a US test case for virus mitigation in schools across the country. report Published Friday by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

“It’s a mistake to focus on personal responsibility here,” said Dr. Matt Willis, Marin’s public health officer. “In fact, the message is the opposite: building systems and policies to protect schools and prevent them from occurring.”

“Everyone makes mistakes,” Willis added. “But in Delta, there isn’t a very wide margin for errors.”

The outbreak occurred after 27 unvaccinated and sometimes unmasked teachers were infected. Many of these children are too young to fire. Gene sequencing confirmed that the virus involved was highly infectious and is now the predominant delta mutant, the report said.

The incident has caused Marin’s most school-related infectious diseases since the outbreak of the pandemic.

“Given that this outbreak occurred in May and June, we were able to formulate a 32-point plan and incorporate the observations into the guidance we provided to the school in the summer in preparation for the fall.” Willis said.

“According to this study, delta variants can be costly to relax, so all students, teachers, staff, and parents need to be especially vigilant,” he says.

Principal Kathleen Kraft, like Pamela Lyons, the school director of the Archdiocese of San Francisco, declined to respond to requests for comment. But the school of 205 students, like all 117 marine schools, upgrade A 32-point virus safety plan on the Marin County Education Department website, if needed.

“The most important message from this story is how important it is to continue to adhere to public health guidance on mitigation strategies that have proven to be very successful in keeping students and staff safe. “Mary Jane Burke, the head of the Marine School, said on Monday. ..

“Get vaccinated. Stay home when you’re sick. Wear a mask. Wash your hands,” Burke added. “From the beginning, the safety guidelines for all Marin County schools apply to all Marin County schools in public, independent, private, and parish. As Dr. Willis said,” I don’t care about viruses. ” ..

Mary Powers, Assistant Communications Director of the Archdiocese of San Francisco, issued a statement on Monday stating that the school’s operations “follow CDC guidance and state and local protocols to ensure the safety and security of our school community.” Stated.

“In consultation with 11 other parishes in California, the Archdiocese of San Francisco continues to promise to follow the public health guidance recommended for all parishes and schools,” the statement said.

“By adhering to these same public security measures, we were able to return to the Catholic school campus last year, with more than 23,000 students returning,” the statement said. “Schools display current COVID-19 measures and protocols on their websites for students, parents and the school community.”

According to Willis, Novat School voluntarily cooperated with the case study.

“The school was a great partner in this process, responding quickly and the staff knew exactly what to do with the case reporting and outbreak investigation elements,” he said. “If anything, we see this response effort as a success in demonstrating a school-public health partnership.”

In addition to the teacher, students in two classrooms and their families were infected, according to the report. All infected students were under the age of 12 and were too young to be vaccinated.

Only two school teachers, including infected teachers, were unvaccinated. Other staff did not test positive. More than half of the infected families were unvaccinated. However, three of the sick parents were vaccinated. They all involved fever, chills, coughing, headaches, and loss of smell — long before it became clear how vulnerable the inoculation was to Delta.

The infected teacher attended a social event from May 13th to 16th and was unaware that he was infected with COVID-19, but began to feel tired and stuffy on May 19th, the report said. There is. Believing that the symptoms were due to allergies, the teacher started coughing, headaches and fever, so he continued to work from May 17th to 21st.

Teachers’ classrooms had open doors and windows as well as air purifiers, and the state at the time required school staff and students to wear masks indoors and outdoors. Students reportedly adhered to mask requirements, but the teacher’s mask was reportedly removed while reading aloud in class.

According to the report, the teacher was tested on May 21 and confirmed to be COVID-19 positive two days later. It was found that the teacher had infected half of the 24 students in the classroom, eight of whom were sitting in the two rows closest to the teacher’s desk.

In addition, six of the 18 students in other grades of school were too young to be vaccinated and tested positive for COVID-19. The same was true for the eight families of students in these two grades. Four of them were siblings of students in an infected teacher’s class who attended school in other grades. The other four were parents, three of whom were fully vaccinated.

Part of the spread among the students in the second class seemed to be related to staying out.

According to the report, three of the vaccinated parents of the infected students were also infected with the virus, but out-of-school transmission may have been limited by the high vaccination rate of the community and were targeted. About 72% of them were completely vaccinated at that time.

County epidemiologist Tracy Lam-Hine, the lead author of the study, said that all infected people had recovered and no one had become seriously ill.

However, Marin’s health authorities felt it important to share their findings about the outbreak nationwide as children return to campus for the new school year this month. For many in California, this is the first full-time face-to-face instruction since March 2020 and is in the midst of an outbreak in the Delta Variant community.

Dr. Lisa Soundtrack, Deputy Health Officer in Marin County, said that the “breakthrough infection” of vaccinated parents at the time, when the delta variant was not yet predominant and was spreading rapidly across the country, was “for us a coal mining scenario. It was a canary. ” Continued need for face masks and other protection.

“This shows that even the highly vaccinated community is vulnerable to delta variants,” says Santora.

Before the outbreak of Novat’s school, Burke said: From this one event. “

“It was the first time a delta variant had affected children in the county, perhaps even in the country,” Burke added. “This demonstrates the importance of our efforts to strictly follow Marin County’s public health guidance.”

According to Willis, the teacher was symptomatic and came to work anyway, before officials and the general public gained experience with the Delta Variant. In May and June, Marin was moving towards the yellow layer of looser virus restriction under the state’s previous color-coded virus status tracking system.

“How many of us have awakened feeling” feeling sick “, feeling allergic or weakened, causing symptoms, doing errands, or choosing to go to work anyway? Willis said. “At our workplace, how many people chose to take off their masks for a few minutes because they thought,’It’s okay in just a few minutes.’ “

Willis, Soundtrack and Burke will address the coronavirus situation at Marine School at a webinar on September 14th at 1:00 pm. Access information can be found at: marinschools.org.

The Bay Area Newsgroup contributed to this report.