ATLANTA (AP) - Georgia’s fourth-largest school district closed all its schools for at least one day on Tuesday after a teacher at two middle schools was found to have COVID-19.
Fulton County Superintendent Mike Looney said the teacher was taken away by ambulance Friday from Bear Creek Middle School in Fairburn, south of Atlanta. The teacher also worked at Woodland Middle School in East Point. Employees and students from those two schools, as well as Creekside High School in Fairburn were sent home early Monday.
“This particular employee had a lot of contact with students,” Superintendent Mike Looney told reporters Monday.
He said the typical teacher in the district instructs more than 100 students a day. Looney said he didn’t know how the teacher had become infected, and couldn’t comment on the teacher’s current medical condition.
Looney said he decided to close the district’s 100-plus schools to allow for disinfecting schools, to let health officials follow up with potentially infected students and teachers and to “pause to assess the potential additional risk that our school community might face.” Looney said the district would decide Tuesday afternoon whether it would reopen on Wednesday. The district has more than 93,000 students.
“Until we can understand the breadth of this particular issue, I think caution is better than negligence,” Looney said.
Looney said the district has a virtual learning plan, but said it wouldn’t begin until schools have been closed for three days.
Gov. Brian Kemp said at a news conference after the announcement that districts considering closure should first contact the department of public health. Closures have a significant impact on student learning, employment and other issues, he said.
A dozen people in Georgia have now tested positive for COVID-19, thought not all those tests have been confirmed by the CDC, Georgia Department of Public Health Commissioner Kathleen Toomey said. State officials are awaiting test results on a person who traveled to Atlanta from South Korea and was put into a CDC quarantine unit upon arrival, Kemp said. Federal officials are working to determine that person’s “potential exposure,” the governor said.
U.S. Rep. Doug Collins, R-Ga, said in a statement on Monday he was notified that he was in a photo with a person who attended a recent political conference and who subsequently tested positive for coronavirus.
“Several” members of Congress had contact with the person, but remain in good health, the Capitol’s attending physician said. Collins said he feels “completely healthy,” but has decided to isolate himself for the remainder of a 14-day quarantine period.
Georgia officials, meanwhile, are turning part of a state park into a site where they can isolate and monitor coronavirus patients, the governor’s office said.
The office stressed in a news release Monday that state officials are making the preparations at Hard Labor Creek State Park in Morgan County “out of an abundance of caution,” and no patients are currently scheduled to be transferred there.
Officials have already installed seven emergency trailers at the park about 50 miles (80 kilometers) east of Atlanta. The Department of Public Safety will provide security, the governor’s office said.
The three confirmed coronavirus cases from Fulton County include a 56-year-old man who had returned to Atlanta from Milan, Italy, on Feb. 22, and his son. Fulton County covers much of Atlanta and surrounding suburbs.
Dozens of Americans on a cruise ship off the California coast are expected to arrive Monday night or Tuesday for quarantine and testing at Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Marietta, officials said Sunday. They include 34 Georgia residents.
The vast majority of people recover from the new virus. According to the World Health Organization, people with mild illness recover in about two weeks, while those with more severe illness may take three to six weeks to recover. In mainland China, where the virus first exploded, more than 80,000 people have been diagnosed and more than 58,000 have so far recovered.
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