Raimondo Claims State Has Plans for Responding to Outbreaks at Schools, Questions About CDC Report
GoLocalProv News Team
Raimondo Claims State Has Plans for Responding to Outbreaks at Schools, Questions About CDC Report
"Every decision we make about reopening our schools will be guided by science and data. For us to determine whether it’s safe for a district to open fully, we’re looking at the number of COVID-19 in that municipality proportionate to its population. Once districts reopen, however, we’ll be able to look at cases on a much more granular level – by school, and even by each stable pod," said Raimondo on Friday.
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"We know there will be positive cases in each district as the year goes on, just like we know there will be positive cases among adults. We can't completely eliminate the virus, but we can stop it from spreading by planning thoroughly for every possibility. This will allow us to be smart and targeted in how we manage those cases while preventing an outbreak and limiting the disruption in learning, just like we’ve done with child care," said Raimondo.
Pointing to CDC Findings
Raimondo cited a Center for Disease Control and Prevention study conducted in Rhode Island and released on Friday. CDC Director Dr. Robert Redfield hosted a press call and said the findings point to a successful reopening of schools this fall.
The two-month study in Rhode Island conducted by the Rhode Island Department of Health and Rhode Island Department of Human Services found that the spread of the disease was limited in Rhode Island childcare facilities.
According to the CDC, "High compliance with RIDHS requirements was observed during 127 unannounced program monitoring visits. Program administrators reported that maintaining stable staffing was the most difficult requirement to implement because of the need to rotate staff members to cover teacher breaks, vacation, and sick leave and that continued adherence to small, stable classes might not be feasible without additional funding."
The CDC writes, "The apparent absence of secondary transmission within the other 662 child care programs was likely the result of RIDOH response efforts to contain transmission and child care programs’ adherence to RIDHS requirements, in particular maximum class sizes and use of face masks for adults. However, case ascertainment among children is challenging, given high rates of asymptomatic infection or mild disease and SARS-CoV-2 infections were likely undetected. Despite limited identified secondary transmission, the impact on child care programs was substantial, with 853 children and staff members quarantined, which highlights the importance of community mitigation efforts to safeguard child care programs."
Dr. Michael Fine, former Director of Health in Rhode Island said the findings are promising but says the study has significant limits
"There are pathways to doing this and doing it right and doing it successfully but you know Dr, Redfield emphasized a number of times that this requires places where there is very limited community transmission," said Fine.
"I don't think you can generalize what we learned about child care and I don't think this was a perfect study as much as I deeply respect the people who did it. I think it was a very short period of observation, and really only about two weeks of the period of observation was a period in which we had much community spread in Rhode island," said Fine.
While Fine discusses both the findings and the limits of the CDC report, Raimondo. like Redfield's boss President Donald Trump, continues to press forward on schools reopening.
Raimondo issued the following policies relating to the potential cases of disease at the schools in Rhode Island.
Raimondo outlined the scenarios:
Today, I want to share with you our plans for responding to each possible scenario of COVID-19 cases in a school district.
Scenario 1 means there’s a very limited number of cases and they’re contained within a stable pod or not connected by transmission within a school. This is exactly what our system is designed to handle. We expect to see this, and we are ready to contain it, isolate the cases, and quarantine direct contacts. As a reminder, a close contact is defined as someone within six feet for more than 15 minutes.
In Scenario 2, we have cases in multiple stable groups but linked by a clear, common school-associated activity. Again, we would isolate cases and quarantine contacts, but we would also bring in the Department of Health to consider whether it’s necessary to take further action, such as moving to a more limited level of in-person learning.
Scenario 3 is if we see community transmission that impacts multiple people across multiple school groups without a clear connection. In this case, in addition to the immediate steps to contain the virus, we might also consider more aggressive action, including a temporary closure of the entire school.
In every situation, the team at RIDOH will work with each district on a case-by-case basis. As a reminder, we also have a detailed, 24-page health protocol playbook available on Back2SchoolRI.com that outlines the steps we will take in every scenario. I want to assure you that we are well-prepared and have the processes in place to mitigate spread and keep students and staff safe.