Schools navigate maze to give virus details

Rumors are churning across the state as Ohio schools reopen amid the pandemic:

A football coach is hospitalized with COVID-19 and his team is quarantined.

A student with no symptoms infected his classmates.

A handful of teachers tested positive before in-person school even began.

Many Ohio schools have refused to either knock down or substantiate the rumors, citing privacy concerns. And that’s caused frustration and fear among many parents and teachers already uneasy about sending children back to class.

On Thursday, Ohio Gov. Mike Dewine said the state will soon mandate that each Ohio school publicly report COVID-19 cases among students and staff within 48 hours of learning of a case.

But just how much information will be released and how helpful it will be for parents making tough choices about their family’s safety is not yet clear.

Neither the Ohio Department of Health nor the Ohio Department of Education answered questions submitted by a reporter Thursday. Representatives for both departments referred the reporter to the order, which will not be available until later this week.

Act) prohibits the disclosure of personal medical records by health providers, but it doesn’t extend to schools. Another federal law, FERPA, governs educational privacy and allows the release of case information, as long as people, including students, are not named.

Giving out too many details can inadvertently identify a child even if a district doesn’t release a name, said Jarrod Tudor, director of regional campuses and education at the University of Akron.

“We have a 9 year-old son ... one kid in a district,” Tudor said. “But if we say ’one boy in Mrs. Turner’s class,’ you’ve narrowed it down to nobody else but him if my son doesn’t show up for school.”

So Ohio school districts tend to be cautious to protect students’ identities, whether they’re reporting numbers of children infected with meningitis or the flu.

Often, they stick to numbers and make them as generic as possible, Tudor said. They typically report districtwide cases without ever identifying which schools were involved, let alone which classrooms, clubs or teams.

Is COVID-19 different?

Earlier this year, as the pandemic spread, the U.S. Department of Education released additional guidance to schools about releasing information about COVID-19 infections.

Recognizing its risk and scale of spread, the agency noted that extraordinary circumstances might mean schools would need to share details that could identify a person with the coronavirus so others could “take appropriate precautions.”

Does that open the door for schools to provide more detailed reporting if an outbreak happens among a particular school marching band, kindergarten class or school bus route? Maybe.

During a news briefing Thursday, Dewine sketched out the general terms of an order that all Ohio schools will follow during the pandemic. Among other things:

• Every district must have a mechanism, possibly existing attendance reporting systems, for parents and guardians of students and school staff to report positive COVID-19 tests of students. Dewine said other COVID-19 information could be shared on the school hotline, too. He didn’t elaborate, but that could involve a student or staff member with symptoms, or someone who learned she was exposed to COVID-19.

• Within 48 hours of receiving information on a positive test, the school district must report it to the local health department and make that information publicly available, possibly through a news release or a post to the school website or Facebook page. Districts also must provide parents and guardians with a copy of “as much information as possible without disclosing protected health information,” possibly through text or email.

• Local health departments will collect the school data and share it with the state health department weekly. The state will compile the information and release it once a week.

Dewine left lots of wiggle room about what parents, school staff and the public will learn about COVID-19 outbreaks — and what they won’t.

“If the community has widespread (COVID-19), it will be reflected in the school,” he said. “It does not mean at all that the school has done anything wrong.”

At the same time, schools will be working closely with local health departments.

Franklin County Public Health Commissioner Joe Mazzola said his department will host a special webinar on reporting protocols with central Ohio superintendents this week, a topic that they’ve already discussed frequently ahead of the upcoming school year.

Though each school’s process of notifying families might look a little different, Mazzola said timing is key.

“What’s important is that we work with districts to make sure they provide timely, appropriate communications to those who need to have the information,” he said.

Fortunately, Mazzola said, this isn’t a new concept — schools are already familiar with reporting outbreaks such as head lice and pertussis, or whooping cough.

Contact tracers across the state will notify those whom they believe might have been put at risk by being exposed to someone infected with COVID-19.

According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “close contact” with an infected person is defined as being within 6 feet of an infected person for at least 15 minutes.

But that’s likely far fewer people than might want to know if they’ve had a brush with someone who tested positive, said Scott Dimauro, president of the Ohio Education Association, which represents more than 100,000 teachers and staff working in Ohio’s schools.

Contact tracing, he said, works only if you can guarantee that everyone in a school maintained 6 feet of physical distancing, wore a mask and washed their hands as thoroughly and as often as they’re supposed to 100% of the time.

“Our position is there needs to be transparency,” Dimauro said. “Don’t disclose a name, but if there is a case in a particular building in a particular classroom on a particular day, tell us.”

Dimauro said the majority of OEA’S members feel pretty good about the plans that schools have laid to reopen.

But no one will know for another month to six weeks how successful schools are at preventing spread, so sharing information about COVID-19 outbreaks is important, he said.

The bottom line

Dr. Joseph Zarconi, a professor and chair of internal medicine at the Northeast Ohio Medical University near Akron, said it’s unlikely parents or teachers will get all of the information they crave because of legally mandated privacy restrictions.

But that might not matter, he said. “I think parents need to behave as though there is a kid infected in (their child’s) class all of the time,” Zarconi said.

Data, he cautioned, is always incomplete and provides only a snapshot in time.

If a third-grader tests positive, for instance, he’s no longer in school by the time the case is reported to the school and parents, teachers and the public are notified.

But what won’t be clear for days or weeks is how many other people have been infected before that child was kept home from school and tested, Zarconi said.

He also worries that COVID-19 infection information released by schools could inadvertently drive infection rates higher if the numbers are initially low and people have a false sense of safety.

“As data start to come out, and numbers don’t look bad, does that cause some of the families who said, ’I’m not going to send my kids back’ to change their minds and say, ’maybe it’s OK’?” Zarconi asked.

More children in schools means a greater risk for infection, he said.

Regardless of the information that schools release about infections, Zarconi said he wouldn’t risk children playing any fall sports.

“The evidence is clear across the nation: Whenever we’ve gone to more strict physical distancing, masks, hand hygiene, the number of infections drop,” Zarconi said. “None of those things can be assured in athletics ... fall athletics should be shut down completely.”

Extracurricular activities from chess club to marching band should be reassessed, too, he said.

If an activity, like the yearbook staff, can carry on remotely, he said, all activity should move online.

For others, like a chess club, safety might be more challenging, he said. Though students could still mask and physically distance for chess matches, there is still built-in risk because players touch the same game pieces and then often touch their mask or faces.

COVID-19 often spreads through the air on invisible plumes of saliva when people exhale, cough or even sing. It’s not clear if someone infected with COVID-19 might potentially spread the disease by blowing into a flute, trombone or clarinet.

“But if you don’t know whether 30 kids with wind instruments are blowing viruses all over the field,” Zarconi said, “act as if they are.”

Cincinnati Enquirer Reporter Terry Demio, Columbus Dispatch Reporter Alissa Widman Neese and USA Today contributed to this report.