California parents knowingly send their COVID-infected child to school, cause student outbreak

Parents in Northern California let one of their children go to school while well aware the child had COVID-19 — and never returned calls from public health contact tracers.

The move not only flew in the face of isolation and quarantine rules but led to an outbreak at San Francisco-area Neil Cummins Elementary School in the Larkspur-Corte Madera School District, said superintendent Brett Geithman..

Seven other students, including the sick child’s sibling, subsequently tested positive. Whether the first child and its sibling were either partially or fully vaccinated is not known.

(File) California parents knowingly sent their kid to school with COVID.

Geithman said that about 75 students were exposed from the eight infected ones. No staff members tested positive in the outbreak, which was the district’s first instance of classroom-based transmission since resuming in-person classes in October 2020.

After testing positive the week of Nov. 8, the infected child and a sibling went to school for the rest of the week and into the next.

The parents, who Geithman said never shared with the school that their kid was sick, could face a misdemeanor charge for violating Marin County’s health order.

The county mandates that those who have the virus self-isolate for a minimum of 10 days.

Marin County Public Health officials said in a statement that they’re looking into the situation, noting: “Thankfully, this is the only known occurrence of a household knowingly sending a COVID-19 positive student to school.”

The district reached out to exposed families after public health officials told them the student hadn’t been entered into the database of kids with coronavirus, according to Geithman. The district instructed exposed families to get rapid testing done at the school the following morning.

The offending family was issued an undisclosed “corrective action” by the district because their actions posed a “safety risk” to those at the school, which could have been amplified over the Thanksgiving holiday.

“This is something where, to get through COVID-19, we all have to do our part,” said Geithman. “This one family, as troubling as it’s been, this is not the norm.”

With News Wire Services