Refusing COVID vaccine because it wasn’t fully approved by the FDA is now no excuse, but the constraints on vaccination show how widespread the Delta variant can be in one CDC documented case of contagion.
*single unvaccinated teacher* who spread the disease to half the students in the classroom and beyond, totaling 27 positive cases, 22 of which had symptoms.
An unvaccinated Marin County elementary school teacher caused an outbreak of COVID-19 among students and parents at the school in May, according to a new report released by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The outbreak at a parochial school led to 27 total cases — five adults, including the teacher, and 22 students or siblings. Of the five infected adults, only two were unvaccinated — the teacher and one parent. All the students involved are too young to be eligible for vaccination. Of the 18 cases that were sequenced, all were found to be the fast-spreading delta variant.
The rash of infections highlights just how contagious the delta variant is, underscoring “the importance of vaccinating school staff members who are in close indoor contact with children ineligible for vaccination as schools reopen,” the CDC report said. Marin County’s high vaccination rate — 72% of eligible people at the time of the outbreak — likely prevented further spread of the coronavirus, the report added.
“This specific outbreak was kind of surprising to us, because at the time we didn’t really know very much about delta,” said Tracy Lam-Hine, an epidemiologist at Marin County Public Health, which led the investigation. He and his team then voluntarily submitted it to the CDC.
The Marin school requires all teachers and students to mask indoors, in line with state guidelines, and the CDC found that adherence to these requirements was high in general. However, the investigation found that the infected teacher had reportedly unmasked while reading aloud to students in class.
While 22 cases were symptomatic — with the most common symptoms being a fever, cough, headache or sore throat — no one was hospitalized. Everyone has since recovered without complications, Lam-Hine said.
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