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STOPPING COVID SPREAD
covid-19

There have been three cases of COVID-19 confirmed at Manteca Unified campuses this week.

In each case, they were caught by the exhaustive daily protocols of self-evaluation that staff  as well as students who start returning to classrooms Monday are required to do before they can be cleared to step foot on a Manteca Unified campus.

They subsequently took COVID-19 cases and tested positive.

The three individuals contracted the COVID-19 virus externally. That means the transmission was not at a school site.

“All of our COVID-19 cases have been external,” noted Manteca Unified community relations coordinator Victoria Brunn of the less than 10 cases since February  involving the 3,200 staff at 33 campuses and other district locations.

There are 24,000 students districtwide.

When someone is confirmed to have symptoms tied to COVID-19 — even if they are the ones that mimic flu — school sites activate WHIP  (Workplace Infection Prevention)  teams to assure multiple people are making sure the district’s strict and specific protocols are followed.

It includes the person being barred from going to any school site for 14 days, all people within the school community being notified by online letters, and using tracing those on campus that may have been in contract with the person under time and conditions outlined by the Centers for Disease Control.

The protocols if a student or staff member is at school when symptoms tied into COVID-19 are taken to a room where they are immediately isolated.

Manteca Unified rolls

out COVID-19 dashboard

Manteca Unified has taken an additional step that few other districts have done. Although county and state health officials have not required it, Manteca Unified on Thursday rolled out their own CIVID 19 dashboard.

It can be accessed at mantecausd.net/Page/1933

All current and confirmed COVID-19 cases involving Manteca Unified student or staff member will be reflected on this page. The numbers will be updated at a minimum once per week and will reflect statistics for the previous 14 days from time of posting.

Those with symptoms will be reflected  on the dashboard for 14 days after they were first detected. That dovetails into CDC guidelines that indicated a person is no longer contagious 14 days after the first symptom appearing. The exception is those who become severely ill and require hospitalization. Once the 14 days lapse for that person, they will be taken off the dashboard count.

The dashboard lists every campus along with the total number of students and staff, number of confirmed cases involving students, the number of conformed cases involving staff, and the proportion of school population.

The proportion of school population is critical as it is used to determine of a specific school campus has to close under county and state health orders.  If 5 percent of a school’s population have conformed COVID-19 cases within a rolling 14-day period, the school has to be closed.

The threshold to force the closure of an entire school district is if one out of every four campuses has closed due to COVID-19 cases within 14 days of each other.

The dashboard on Thursday contained only three cases —  one each at Brock Elliott School, Eats Union High, and Shasta School.

 If a partial, total school closure, or District closure is warranted, families will be contacted via email and/or phone and a swift transition to Phase 1: Off-Campus Learning will occur for the school(s) affected. The email and/or phone call will disclose as much information as possible relating to the events. MUSD will maintain confidentiality as required under HIPAA and FERPA and state law related to privacy of educational records.

Once the District learns of an individual who has tested positive at a school site or office, these steps will be followed:

*Isolate individuals if present and advise of any required self-quarantine.

*Contact MUSD Health Services Department.

*Contact trace within MUSD to determine close contacts. Close contact is defined as any individual who was within 6 feet of an infected person for at least 15 minutes starting from 2 days before illness onset (or, for asymptomatic patients, 2 days prior to positive specimen collection) until the time the patient is isolated.

*Immediately notify anyone within MUSD determined to have had close contact and advise of any required self-quarantine.

*Follow any additional recommendations from the San Joaquin County Department of Public Health.

Students start returning

to campuses on Monday

Students will start returning to classrooms for the first time since mid-March beginning Monday.

Transitional kindergarten through third graders returning Monday and fourth through sixth graders returning Nov. 16 will be split into AM and PM sessions so they can be on campus five days a week. No more than 15 students will be in a classroom at any given time. The end result is the number of students on a campus on any given day is at least half of the actual enrollment.

The seventh as well as eighth graders returning on Nov. 16 will follow the same hybrid learning schedule as high schools with half the students on campus on Monday and Thursday while the other half is in the classroom Tuesday and Friday. When they are not on campus students are distance learning. All seventh through 12th graders are distance learning on Wednesdays.

 

Student must do

self-assessment daily

The first COVID-19 protocol students will have to follow when on-campus learning resumes Monday happens even before they step out of their home.

They will need to log onto their email on their district issued device for a link they will receive at 7 a.m. to complete an online survey asking questions relating to COVID-19 exposure, signs, and symptoms.

Based on the results, they will receive either a green check or a red stop sign. The green means it is safe for them to go to school. A red stop sign will direct a student to stay home and contact the Manteca Unified School District Health Services between 8 and 11 a.m.

Those that receive a red stop sign will also receive a link to complete a contact tracing survey designed to help identify people students have been in contact with and the locations visited.

All of that information is aggregated on a dashboard for each school. Teachers get data that allows them to determine if a student in their class should not be there or hasn’t taken the survey.

Those issues are addressed immediately.

 

  To contact Dennis Wyatt, email dwyatt@mantecabulletin.com