The anatomy of a COVID-19 outbreak
Why Collierville High halted in-person classes
Two weeks into the new school year, Collierville had to suspend in-person classes at its high school, a problem education leaders across the country spent summer months planning to mitigate or avoid.
It’s now one of a handful of schools in the state that opened for in-person classes and then closed due to COVID-19. Collierville activated its contingency plan for two weeks, meaning inperson classes are set to resume on Monday.
The district made the decision after the Shelby County Health Department identified a cluster of cases at the school.
“We’re really taking it one day at a time with this,” Mario Hogue, spokesperson for the district, said in a recent interview.
Despite all the planning and protocols, COVID-19 can still find its way into school buildings. And, in the case of Collierville High School, two cases became five, 300 potential exposures were identified and the school decided to close its doors. Since then, it’s reported 20 new cases among students and staff.
A look at how the health department and school district responded to the case shows the relationship between the two, and reveals more about what families and educators can expect when
cases are identified among a school’s students and staff.
Before returning, a change in plans
A few weeks before Collierville students returned to school for the fall, the district altered its plan to correspond with the health department’s guidance for six feet of social distancing in the classroom. To do so meant reducing the number of students in the building to accommodate that recommendation — the district had based its plan off of the three feet distance recommended by the American Academy of Pediatrics — and landing with a hybrid schedule.
Before school returned, parents across the district protested the change, and the high school had already reported four cases of COVID-19, according to news reports. With the hybrid schedule, more students than expected — 36% of the district’s 9,000 — would be full-time virtual learners, clearing the way for elementary schoolers to attend five days each week, said Gary Lilly, the district’s superintendent.
Week one of a new school year
To his knowledge, no one missed the first day due to having COVID-19 or being a close contact for a case, Lilly said at the time.
Almost every aspect of school had to be retooled for the new year, but at the time, the back-to-school excitement was still there, as it would be for any other school year. On the first day of school, Lilly said he was prepared to make the changes necessary for safety and for delivering education.
“The first week of school is always an exciting time. There are usually things you have to work out and establish for students and staff so that everyone gets into a routine,” Lilly said at the time. “Certainly there are far more things that have to get worked out this year than usual because there’s a whole different set of protocols and procedures.”
Beginning the new year came with the launch of a community COVID-19 data committee, designed with data and public health arms to review schooland community-specific trends.
Collierville also began the year as one of two of the county’s seven public districts with a plan in place to communicate all cases of COVID-19 at a school to all families, not just people potentially exposed. The move was supported by guidance from Le Bonheur’s Children Hospital.
Week two: New cases quickly become a cluster
It took just over a week before two cases were reported among the high school’s football team. The district canceled its next two football games upon announcement of the cases.
Contact sports, like football, are allowed by the state but have been discouraged by local health officials and medical experts.
The way Hogue described it, the school was advised by the health department to conduct preliminary contact tracing, alerting any students and staff who might have been exposed to the virus.
He said it works like this: When a case is found, the school will determine and notify, as per the latest health directive, people who were potentially exposed to the case. That’s based on the six feet of social distancing, masking and a timeframe of two days before the person who had the virus began displaying symptoms. The health department
“The first week of school is always an exciting time. There are usually things you have to work out and establish for students and staff so that everyone gets into a routine. Certainly there are far more things that have to get worked out this year than usual because there’s a whole different set of protocols and procedures.”
Gary Lilly
District superintendent
then comes in to conduct its official contact tracing, issuing isolation orders for anyone who has tested positive and quarantine orders for any close contacts.
The health department has said it is the only group with authority to issue those orders and complete case investigations, but says it “relies heavily” on the schools to assist the department in its tracing endeavors by notifying them of people who may have been close contacts for a reported case. Dr. Alisa Haushalter, the department’s director, has said it is a “misperception of the public and perhaps even some others within schools” that schools conduct their own contact tracing.
By the end of the second week of school, Aug. 28, Collierville High School had a reported five cases and had reached “cluster” status, according to the Shelby County Health Department.
“Once we were considered a cluster, the contact tracing protocols expanded greatly,” Hogue, the spokesperson, said in a recent interview.
So what happens when you have a cluster at school?
To qualify as a cluster, first, there have to be two cases associated with the school, David Sweat, epidemiologist at the Shelby County Health Department, wrote in an email responding to an inquiry by The Commercial Appeal. Those cases are either known to be connected to one another or have no known links to other COVID-19 cases.
Sweat also defined the instances when two cases would not constitute a cluster.
“If there are two cases in a facility but each of them are linked to known cases otherwise and they are also not linked to each other in any identifiable way, we would not consider that a facility cluster,” Sweat wrote.
Once the department identified a cluster of cases at the school, its criteria for potential exposures expanded greatly, Hogue said, which caught the district somewhat by surprise.
New instructions meant that the district had to assume that a student with COVID-19 could have exposed anyone in the classrooms, study halls or lunch breaks, he said.
“So their (SCHD) new recommendations had no dependency on the six feet of social distancing or the mask. This was a whole new guideline. This guideline replaced the social distancing guidelines,” Hogue said.
In an email to the school district on the Friday Collierville announced it would go remote, Sweat recapped a conversation between the district and the health department, including himself and Dr. Bruce Randolph, the health officer. The two advised that the following people should also be considered potential contacts:
“Classmates and teachers who shared airspace in an enclosed classroom with a confirmed case. Due to repetition of exposure and duration of time in a classroom, and also in recognition that air stagnates and there can be repeated exposures in a classroom, it would be difficult to specify which students in a classroom are not exposed,” Sweat wrote.
Sweat then made clear that he was not advising the school to close.
“Shelby County Health Department is not requiring the school to be closed. If the individuals at risk can be quarantined the remainder of the students and staff can work and attend school. If the school system judges that the school cannot operate safely and chooses to close, that is the prerogative of Collierville Schools to decide,” Sweat wrote.
Applying those guidelines, the school categorized 300-plus individuals as potentially exposed to COVID-19. Since the health department began its investigation, the number of close contacts instructed to quarantine has been lower, Hogue said.
Ultimately, the school building did close, and the district activated its learning contingency plan. Instead of students in the building on the hybrid schedule, everyone would be learning remotely for the next two weeks, returning Sept. 14.
Because the health department is providing one-on-one guidance, Hogue said, he’s been communicating to families and staff that there is no “carbon copy” response to having cases in a school building.
“That’s what we need to get communicated across ... I always get the question, ‘If this happens again, are you going to have to do the same thing?’” Hogue said. “And I can’t say ‘yes’ and I can’t say ‘no’ because, unfortunately, they don’t know. Until we get to that scenario, then they will provide directives. And I know that’s not helpful, because it’s definitely not helpful for us, but that’s where we’re at.”
How did the virus spread?
Since moving to virtual learning due to the cluster, the high school has reported 20 more cases of COVID-19 among students and staff, Hogue said Tuesday. The new cases bring the total case tally at the high school to 25 since the school year began Aug. 17.
Based on state data, the school has the most associated cases of any public school in Shelby County. There are 33 total cases of COVID-19 across the Collierville district.
Early investigations are reiterating that schools can only control what happens inside their classrooms but will be affected by the prevalence of COVID-19 in the community, as well as the community’s compliance with safety protocols. And athletics, approached in different ways across the county by level and sport, are being re-evaluated; at least two of the high school’s cases have been associated with the school’s football team.
As for the other 23, it is so far unclear whether the virus was contracted inside or outside the high school building, Hogue said.
Either way, the school still plans to resume its hybrid model Monday, meaning that half of the high school students who opted for that plan will be in the building at any given time. On Fridays, everyone learns remotely.
Because of the hybrid plan, Hogue said, the transition to remote learning was “seamless.” Teachers are still teaching and students were used to virtual instruction three days each week.
Hogue said he is grateful for the patience and support of families, but issued a plea for compliance with COVID-19 outside of school.
“We are really asking our families to be mindful of the social distancing guidelines after school hours,” Hogue said.
Laura Testino covers education and children’s issues for the Commercial Appeal. Reach her at laura.testino@commercialappeal.com or 901-512-3763. Find her on Twitter: @Ldtestino