Schools top 100 COVID cases

GREENWICH — The public school district has surpassed 100 positive COVID-19 cases in just under three months since the start of school.

According to the regular Tuesday update of the district’s COVID-19 tracker, Greenwich schools have logged 110 cases this fall, up 13 in the four-day stretch since the last update, Nov. 27, after tallying 11 total cases the week prior.

“We were trending down, then over the weekend we got a bunch of cases,” said Board of Education Communications Liaison Jonathan Supranowitz. “Today’s count is typical of the count from two Tuesdays ago, when we saw an increase of 13, and three Tuesdays before when we were up 14 cases.”

The 17 active cases in the district are spread throughout nine schools, including Greenwich High, Eastern Middle, Western Middle, Cos Cob, Glenville, the International School at Dundee, New Lebanon, North Street and Riverside schools.

Despite the uptick, Supranowitz said the district has been encouraged by the number of resolved cases. Since Friday, 15 students were cleared to come back to school. Since the start of school, 93 cases have been resolved and nearly 1,200 calls have been made as part of the district’s contact tracing efforts since Oct. 1. Also since the start of October, 246 of those called have returned negative tests, according to the district.

Some epidemiologists are predicting a postThanksgiving spike as a result of people getting together with family and friends over the holiday, despite restrictions. Some teachers and parents have urged Greenwich schools to consider shifting to remote learning during the holidays, as some districts in the state have done. But the district, along with the State Department of Education, have maintained that children are safer in school than out of school.

According to Greenwich schools, just one of the district’s 110 cases since the start of school could be traced back to in-school exposure. Ninety-five of those 110 have been linked to “outside activities” and 14 have been attributed to “undetermined exposure” or “community transmission.”