Gulfport High sends 100 students home to quarantine after teacher shows COVID symptoms
On Tuesday morning, a Gulfport High School teacher arrived at school and went directly to administrators to report experiencing mild symptoms of COVID-19.
Within hours, 100 students who had been in the four classes taught by the teacher were getting picked up by parents. They’ll stay at home and quarantine until the teacher’s COVID-19 test results come back.
If the teacher tests positive, everyone will spend 14 days in quarantine, said Sandy Commer-East, community relations director for the Gulfport School District.
“We are just being proactive, following our strict protocols following our students and our staff,” Commer-East said. “It could be allergies. We don’t know, but we are not taking a chance.”
The quarantine at Gulfport High is the first large-scale quarantine on the Coast since school started for most districts last week.
All 100 students did not necessarily have significant exposure to the teacher showing symptoms.
Gulfport decided to send home anyone who had been in a class with the teacher, rather than trying to use seating charts or interviews to determine who had been a “close contact,” which the state defines as anyone “within six feet of the infected person for at least 15 minutes or greater.”
Other districts, such as Jackson County, have said they will be more selective about asking community members who might have been exposed at school to quarantine.
Districts are not required to publicly announce positive cases at schools, though state guidelines say they should notify teachers, students and families who may have been exposed.
Commer-East said Gulfport planned to follow that practice generally, but make public announcements if a significant number of students and teachers are required to quarantine as a result of possible exposure.
“If it was a one-off, we’d handle it like we would a cold, but if it is a large number of students, we are transparent,” Commer-East said. “We have nothing to hide.”
The district has not yet begun tracing secondary contacts (that is, contacts of the 100 students who are being sent home) because no one other than the teacher has exhibited any symptoms.
“If anybody starts showing a symptom, at that point that secondary tracing might come into play,” Commer-East said. “But if we send them home today, it’s highly unlikely that they’re spreading anything.”
This story was originally published August 11, 2020 at 12:33 PM.
