Virus cases reported in 100 NYC school buildings
NEW YORK: At least one coronavirus case had been reported in more than 100 school buildings and early childhood centres in the New York City school system by the first day of in-person instruction on Monday, according to the Department of Education.
Nearly all the buildings remained open, though six were closed temporarily, in accordance with city guidelines that only those schools that report at least two cases in different classrooms will be shut.
The cases occurred between Sept 8, when teachers and staff reported to schools, and Monday, when the first students entered classrooms. In dozens of cases, the infected individuals got the positive test results and did not report to work, the department said. Others did report to school, and their close contacts in the buildings had to quarantine for two weeks.
Avery Cohen, a spokeswoman for Mayor Bill de Blasio, said the cases included a “handful” of students, but that “the vast majority” were among staff before schools reopened for students.
Cases were reported at 11 additional schools and two community-based prekindergartens on Tuesday.
Some public health experts said the statistics reflect a new reality of in-person learning during a pandemic in a system of 1.1 million schoolchildren, 75,000 teachers and 2,500 school buildings and early childhood centres. Daily positive cases will be inevitable, and individual building closings will be a common occurrence, they said.
Dr Michael Mina, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health, said the city’s families should be prepared for a constant game of “Whac-a-Mole.” The virus is likely to reemerge repeatedly in school buildings until there is either a vaccine or very frequent testing, he said. Ideally, 50% of all students and staff should be tested three times a week, Mina said.
“I think the vast majority of schools will have outbreaks, and then bring people back,” said Dr Mina, whom the teachers’ union consulted about the city’s school testing plan. “Test people, and trace them and bring them back after a week or two. But that is such a disruptive process for K-to-12 schools, and for working adults.”
The city’s mandatory testing programme for public schools does not begin until October, but some 19,400 teachers were tested voluntarily before Monday. So far, 65 of them — about 1 in 300 — tested positive, the city said.
That rate, of about 0.34%, is a third of the overall positivity rate for the city, which has been about 1% for weeks, but is still “a pretty high number to be virus positive,” said Dr Mina, and indicates that there may be dozens of undiscovered cases among teachers who have not yet been tested.
“What this testing shows is that the virus is there; it is going to be brought into school buildings,” said Dr Jeffrey Shaman, a professor of environmental health sciences at Columbia University and a leading modeller of infectious diseases. “Then the question is, will it transmit there?”
How city schools manage cases and prevent outbreaks will be key to keeping the district, the largest in the nation, open for at least some in-person instruction.