Marin COVID-19 outbreak linked to Novato school

Marin County health authorities are investigating a rash of COVID-19 infections linked to Our Lady of Loretto School in Novato.

Dr. Lisa Santora, Marin County’s deputy public health officer, said the outbreak includes 10 cases “inside the school and outside the school.”

The county declined to identify the “index case,” or the originator of the outbreak.

“It’s safe to say the index case was an unvaccinated person who was eligible to be vaccinated,” said Dr. Matt Willis, the county’s public health officer.

“All the cases are unvaccinated individuals,” Willis added. “That includes people who were eligible to be vaccinated but were unvaccinated and people who were not eligible to be vaccinated, by virtue of age.”

Many students at the private K-8 school are unvaccinated because they are under age 12, the lower threshold for vaccinations.

School officials could not be reached for comment. Officials at the Archdiocese of San Francisco, which oversees some parochial schools in Marin, did not respond to requests for information.

Willis said his staff is tracking and testing whether any of the infected people were involved in social gatherings outside the school, or were playing in local sports teams.

He declined to specify a timeline for those activities.

“The testing is based on which individuals were determined to have been exposed,” Willis said. “I can’t get into any specific groups.”

Kris Cosca, superintendent of the Novato Unified School District, said no cases were reported at its schools, but some of its students might have been exposed. He said 23 students at risk were “sent home to quarantine.”

“Contact tracing has determined that some San Ramon Elementary School students were potentially exposed to COVID through attendance at a Novato private school, participation in youth sports, or by their siblings in one of those two settings,” Cosca said. “Contact tracing has shown that any positive cases identified to date are not a result of exposure at San Ramon Elementary.”

Willis said the infection cluster was the largest incidence so far at Marin schools since the county began tracking schools virus data last September. Prior to this week, there have been only 12 cases of school-based transmission in all 117 Marin schools during almost 2.5 million studentdays.

“The children who shared these classrooms were also connected socially and also connected to sports teams,” Willis said. “The location of the transmission is still being determined.”

He said Marin has one person in the hospital with COVID, and that person is unvaccinated. Another COVID patient, who was unvaccinated, died earlier a few weeks ago. All the other cases of infection that the county is seeing are people who are unvaccinated.

“The best way to protect ourselves and others around us is to be vaccinated,” Willis said.

“We can’t rely on high vaccination rates around us for personal protection,” Willis added. “It’s true we have a very effective tool available to us for preventing outbreaks like this — that’s the vaccine.”

Willis said the outbreak could impact Marin’s plans to move next week from its current orange tier status into the yellow tier in the state’s tracking plan. The state requires counties to have two cases or fewer per day per 100,000 population for two consecutive weeks — a standard the county was meeting up until this week.

While the Novato cases could prevent the county’s progression, “we’ve made so much progress elsewhere that we could move forward,” Willis said.

Marin has the highest vaccination rate of all 58 counties in the state.

“It’s great that we have the highest vaccination rate, but every individual who is unvaccinated remains at risk,” Willis said. “This is a sign of that.”

The state’s color-coded tier system, known as the Blueprint for a Safer Economy, will be retired on June 15.