Eight children contracted COVID-19 and 75 were quarantined after a family knowingly sent their infected child to a Marin County school after they were told to keep their children home, officials said Friday.
The parents, who have not been identified, were notified the week of Nov. 8 by the Marin County Health and Human Services Department that one of their two children had tested positive, said Brett Geithman, superintendent of the Larkspur-Corte Madera School District.
Both the siblings are students at Neil Cummins Elementary School in Corte Madera.
The parents were specifically told to keep both children home and to notify the school, Geithman said. Instead, they notified no one and sent their children to school for seven more days, and they did not return multiple calls from public health contact tracers, he said.
The school district did not find out about the protocol breach until Nov. 18, when administrators got a call from Marin County’s public health office asking why the school had not yet uploaded the positive case to the school’s database.
“We just dropped everything,” Geithman said of the district’s staff, which he said then put in an estimated 150 hours doing testing, contact tracing and data entry related to the case. “This is a strong reminder that the pandemic is not over, and we have to stay diligent, we have to follow protocols.”
Geithman notified all school parents of the incident. On Nov. 19, the last school day before Thanksgiving break, the siblings’ two classes were tested — about 50 children — and all of them were advised to go into modified quarantine over the 10-day break. A third class, with 25 students, was added to the modified quarantine after an additional positive case was found there.
The modified quarantine meant the students were not allowed to travel or attend family gatherings or group activities through Nov. 28.
All told, eight children — including the two siblings — tested positive. Three of the cases were the siblings’ classmates and are suspected school-based transmissions; the rest are considered household-based, Geithman said. He said he was not aware of any children having significant virus symptoms, and none of the children were hospitalized.
No staff members tested positive.
Geithman said that even though some children at Neil Cummins may have received their first coronavirus vaccine shot in November, when the vaccines became available for 5- to 11-year olds, none of them had yet had a second shot.
Geithman said the district will take “corrective action” against the parents. He declined to say what that might include, citing confidentiality. He said the two siblings would not be penalized in any way.
“These are elementary school students who were sent to school by their parents,” he said. “They should face no consequences.”
Mary Jane Burke, Marin superintendent of schools, said the parents should be held accountable for putting the community at risk.
“If it is accurate that a parent or guardian did not follow required protocols and knowingly sent their COVID-positive child to school, there should be consequences because they have jeopardized the health and safety of other children, their families and school staff,” she said.
Geithman said one of the many lessons learned in the incident was that the COVID-19 safety precautions established at Neil Cummins — such as universal indoor masking — were broadly effective at preventing a much larger outbreak.
“This was elementary school,” Geithman said. “They’re kids, playing and having fun together, for seven days with a positive COVID case among them — and there were only three suspected in-school transmissions. What that tells us is that our COVID protocols are working pretty well.”
Source: www.mercurynews.com