283 SCHOOL COVID-19 CASES IN AUG., SEPT.
Data limited; each campus differs in how it is reported
There have been at least 283 COVID-19 cases associated with K-12 schools in San Diego County in August and September, county officials told The San Diego UnionTribune this week.
The vast majority of those cases aff licted children. About 84 percent, or 237 of the cases, were students, while 16 percent, or 46 cases, were staff.
There are roughly 500,000 K-12 public school students in San Diego County, not including thousands more who attend private schools.
Those numbers provide the first, albeit limited picture of how much COVID-19 is surfacing in local schools since they first started reopening Aug. 24.
But the county is not releasing several key details about the data.
For one thing, officials are not saying whether students or staff who tested positive were in distance learning or going to school in person. It’s possible some of the students and staff contracted COVID-19 in a way that has nothing to do with their school.
The county is also not disclosing the names of schools that have reported cases. That’s similar to how it has kept private the names of businesses that reported cases or outbreaks.
When asked about this, county spokeswoman Sarah Sweeney said in an email that it’s up to schools to decide how to present COVID-19 information to parents, staff and the public.
“It is the purview of the schools to provide information related to their respective outbreaks,” she said.
It’s hard to place the school case total in broader context or estimate a COVID-19 incidence rate without knowing how many students and staff are going to school in person, said Robert Schooley, an infectious disease specialist and UC San Diego professor of medicine.
Neither officials at the county health department nor officials at the county education office said they know how many schools, public or private, are currently open.
Most school districts were not open for in-person classes in August or September; many are reopening this month or at the start of next year. And even at reopened schools, some students are choosing to stay home and do distance learning.
Some groups have been pointing to reports of COVID-19 cases at San Diego County schools as reasons to not reopen more campuses.
That’s what the Chula Vista teachers union has been arguing, for example, as a reason to postpone their school district’s reopening. Chula Vista recently announced it may postpone reopening from late this month to the end of 2020.
The mere existence of a COVID-19 case at a school isn’t necessarily cause for alarm, according to some experts who have said it is virtually impossible to avoid infections at schools.
“It’s inevitable there will
be some cases in schools when the surrounding counties or municipal areas have the case rates we do,” Schooley said.
San Diego County is currently in the second-lowest tier on the state’s COVID-19 reopening system. As of Tuesday it was reporting 6.5 new cases a day per 100,000 residents over a 7-day average.
“Schools are part of the larger county and they’re not going to be insulated from the virus,” Schooley said.
What matters more than just the total number of infections in county schools is the distribution of COVID-19 cases, Schooley said.
For example, if the cases are spread out with just one at each school, that could mean the person got it from the community, not necessarily on campus. But if there are several cases at one school, that’s more likely to indicate the spread is
happening at the school, Schooley said.
There have been no known outbreaks in a K-12 setting in the county, Sweeney said. Outbreaks are defined as three or more cases from different households who went to the same location within a 14-day period.
Schooley said that because there are differences in how schools are approaching COVID-19, it’s hard to generalize and make judgments about the numbers of cases schools are reporting.
For example, schools have different approaches to testing. Some are only testing students and staff who are already showing symptoms. Others may be doing regular, proactive testing to catch asymptomatic cases.
Schools are also handling their reporting of COVID-19 cases differently.
Some districts are announcing infections on their websites for the sake of
transparency, the districts said. Del Mar Union and Poway Unified are two districts that have a COVID-19 dashboard showing in real time how many active student and staff cases there are and at which schools the cases are located.
Other districts have had cases but did not post about them on their COVID-19 websites.
State guidance requires schools to immediately notify county health officials, staff and families of any exposure to a positive COVID-19 case at school.
If a school learns a student or staff member has tested positive, the school must send them home and have them stay home for 10 days, according to state guidance. People who had close contact with a person who tests positive are to be sent home and quarantine for 14 days.