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10/02/2020 12:00 AMAnother incidence of coronavirus at Valley Regional High School (VRHS) has appeared, though this case, the third since classes started on Sept. 1, did not trigger a school closure. Thirty-nine members of the school community have been instructed to quarantine, however.
Superintendent of Schools Brian White informed the school community by email on Sept. 30 of a VRHS student who had tested positive for COVID-19.
The case did not necessitate a school building closure but led to the quarantine of numerous students and staff. The infected individual, a resident of Essex, last attended school in-person on Sept. 29.
“The case was notified of the positive test result on [the evening of Sept. 29] and the Essex Health Department was notified” the following morning, said Essex Health Director Lisa Fasulo, in correspondence with the Courier.
Fasulo said that she asked the infected individual “to isolate at home for a minimum of 10 days.”
In collaboration with the administration of the Region 4 school district and the Connecticut River Area Health District (CRAHD), which is the local health department for individuals residing in Chester and Deep River, Fasulo then worked to determine the “close contacts” of the individual.
Close contacts are defined by the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) as individuals who were within six feet of the case for 15 minutes or more, starting from two days before onset of the illness or two days prior to collecting a positive specimen (for asymptomatic individuals).
“In some respects we were fortunate in the timing of this news that today was one of our days where schools are closed for deep cleaning and so we did not have students and staff in the building which gave us the benefit of just a little bit of extra time to respond appropriately,” said White at a Sept. 30 meeting of the Region 4 Board of Education’s Supervision District Committee.
The school is now operating in a hybrid configuration, with two different cohorts of students and each cohort attending classes in the school building for only two days a week. Students learn remotely on Wednesdays, when the school building is cleaned.
“The high school does not need to close on Thursday [and] Friday this week because the case is in the Monday [to] Tuesday cohort,” said Fasulo. “Additionally, the case was not a close contact with every student in the Monday–Tuesday cohort therefore the [Essex] Health Department is only contacting a subset of that Monday–Tuesday cohort.”
As of Sept. 30, the Essex Health Department had identified 39 individuals as being a close contact of the infected student. These close contacts have been instructed to quarantine for a minimum of 14 days.
“Many of these close contacts do not reside in Essex, so they will subsequently be monitored for the duration of their quarantine period by the health department where they reside,” said Fasulo.
This is the third positive COVID-19 case at VRHS since the start of the school year. The first two cases caused a temporary school building closure on Sept. 8 and 9, with students moving to full remote learning on those days.
White said that having “more information upfront about known potential contacts” helped speed up the district’s decision to keep the school building open after Sept. 30.
In addition to working with local health departments on the decision, the school district followed guidance from Addendum 5 of the State of Connecticut Department of Education’s Adapt Advance Achieve school reopening document. Any future cases of COVID-19 in the school district would follow similar protocol, according to White.
A full reopening of in-person classes in the Region 4 school district is planned for Tuesday, Oct. 13.
“We sent out a communication last week that we’re continuing to steadily march towards our goal of a full reopening…and unless there is a significant change with the statewide [public health] data, we anticipate being able to do that in a couple of weeks,” said White.