Authorities believe that last month, parents in Northern California purposefully violated the state’s isolation and quarantine laws by sending their COVID-19 positive child and his or her younger sibling to school, resulting in an outbreak of the coronavirus at a nearby elementary school.
The Virus Was Spread In California As Covid Positive Students Went To School
A fine or a misdemeanor prosecution against the parents is possible if it is discovered that they violated Marin County’s health order, which mandates that anybody who tests positive for the virus isolates oneself for at least 10 days after being diagnosed.
The county’s public health officer, Dr. Matt Willis, has stated that a decision on whether or not the family would be penalized will be made early next week. Claims have been made that the law has been broken by what he’s doing. Furthermore, it violates even the most basic ethical norms of communal responsibility. It is confirmed by the child’s positive viral test the week of November 8th, according to Larkspur-Corte Madera School District Superintendent Brett Geithman. Both kids went to school the rest of the week and the week after that.
In Corte Madera, a Marin County neighborhood about 15 miles north of San Francisco, where their sister was infected with the virus, they are students at the district’s Neil Cummins Elementary School. After receiving good results, Geithman alleges that neither the parents nor public health contract tracers informed the school of the findings.
According to Willis, “They had suggested that they were not clear on how they were going to separate the child” after a positive test result. According to Willis, the family’s inability to take time off work when the children needed to isolate themselves at home was not due to any challenges with language or finances. Aside from this, he said that it was “quite clear” for families to comprehend that they should not send their children to school if they tested positive for the virus.
Public health officials contacted the school system on November 18 after seeing a discrepancy in the district’s records, according to Geithman. Officials in the district were alerted that a kid with COVID-19 was not listed in the database, according to Geithman. Families of students who had been exposed were told immediately and instructed to come in the morning for rapid testing to identify whether or not the school system had exposed them. The original student, their sibling, three of their classmates who were suspected of school-based transmissions, and three children who were alleged home transmissions were all found to be positive for the virus. No one in the class had a serious illness that necessitated an overnight stay in the hospital.
According to the superintendent, a total of 75 children were infected as a consequence of the eight cases. No one was pleased with the findings. In educational institutions, students are forced to wear masks inside. Willis claims that the kids would have seen a lot more transmission if they weren’t masked. As far as Geithman was aware, neither the original student nor their sibling had received any update.