MANATEE COUNTY (WSNN) – After a couple of positive cases, an unusually high number of people were sent home to quarantine from a Manatee County School.
This is an update from this story.
This week, Palmetto High’s principal reported a COVID-19 case, forcing more than 100 students and staff to quarantine.
“The district was identified that one of the teachers that had been in the classroom had tested positive,” School board member and epidemiologist, Dr. Scott Hopes said.”
Leading the District Operations Center to investigate. Manatee county schools spokesman Michael Barber says it’s a detailed process involving the DOC’s health experts and the principal to analyze the classroom and set up.
“They will even look at surveillance video, they will take measure to see the distances between desk and classrooms, look at seating charts,” communications director,” Michael Barber said.
But, Dr. Hopes says in this case, the teachers didn’t have a seating chart, and students in the classroom were not maintaining the six-feet rule, making it nearly impossible to contact trace.
“The CDC guidelines identify a contact with a known case if there was less than six-feet of distance between the known case and the exposed individuals for a period of 15 minutes or longer,” Dr. Hopes said.
So they just quarantined everyone who could’ve been near the infected staff. Dr. Hopes says this perfect storm should serve as a teachable moment for a preventable situation.
“Where you had indiscretion or failures in following the protocol from teachers down to the classroom,” Dr. Hopes said. “And it resulted in too many students getting to practice their eLearning skills for 14 days.”
When SNN asked for more details, Barber responded saying they cannot disclose them.
“What we’ve been instructed through the Florida Department of Health is, we can’t give any kind of information that would identify any of these people because that’s their privacy rights thought HIPPA,” Barber said.
There’s frustration across the board when it comes to communication about COVID cases in schools, and Dr. Hopes says the district is working on creating a dashboard with a tracking system for families.
“I think it’s important that we manage the messaging and provide accurate, timely information to the public and to our parents and employees,” Dr. Hopes said.
He says they hope the tracking system will be ready to go live after the Labor Day weekend.