Medical consultant touts COVID-19 safety measures

Lorain City Schools’ methods to protect against the novel coronavirus pandemic will be examples in a research brief authored by a Cleveland doctor.

On April 30, CEO/Superintendent Jeff Graham announced Lorain Schools “has been selected as an exemplar to demonstrate how to safely re-open schools during the COVID-19 pandemic.”

The district partnered with area health experts including Dr. Prakash Ganesh, program director at Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.

“We hypothesized that schools were probably safe, but we couldn’t be completely sure,” Ganesh said. “You guys proved through the mitigation practices you used and through your COVID testing, that we can safely re-open schools, and you showed how to do it.”

Ganesh’s research brief will describe the mitigation strategies used by Lorain Schools and share what the educational leaders learned to keep COVID-19 incidence rates low, allowing for a safe return to school, according to the announcement from Lorain Schools. Among the highlights:

• Lorain City Schools is the only district in the area to fully meet the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s recommendations for a safe reopening of school.

• In the month of January, Lorain County’s COVID-19 test incidence rate was 20 percent, while the Lorain City Schools incidence rate was only 2.4 percent.

• Since the return to school from Jan. 4 to April 18, Lorain City Schools have administered 6,319 PCR COVID-19 tests. Of those, only 49 were positive cases, a 0.78 percent incidence rate.

• Based on COVID-19 testing and contact tracing efforts, Lorain Schools has not had a single case of nonathlete, school-based transmission of COVID-19.

Ganesh has requested COVID-19 testing data for his research brief, which maintains the anonymity of all participants.

For staff, he is seeking information about gender, race, ethnicity, age, zip code, school, job category, extracurricular participation, COVID test dates and test results.

Students are asked to share their gender, race, ethnicity, age, zip code, school, grade, disability status, extracurricular participation, COVID test dates, and test results.

No participant names, birthdates, addresses, phone numbers, social security numbers or student identification numbers will be shared.