Authorities in Massachusetts are blasting the parents who sent their child to school after they tested positive for COVID-19. The unidentified student was tested on September 9 and learned that the results had come back positive two days later. Despite knowing they were sick, the student showed up for the first day of classes on Monday (September 14) at Attleboro High School, which is about 40 miles from Boston.
School administrators learned about the positive test on Tuesday.
"Long story short, rumors started circulating around town, so someone contacted the bureau of health here in Attleboro and did some checking and found out that it was true, that he had tested positive," the school's principal, Bill Runey, said.
When officials found out that the student's parents knew they were positive, they were livid.
"It was a reckless action to send a child — a teenager — to school who was COVID-positive," Attleboro Mayor Paul Heroux told WHDH. "It was really poor judgment. If you know that your child has coronavirus, is COVID-positive, you should not send your child to school under any circumstances."
As a result, nearly 30 students were told they must quarantine for the next two weeks.
Runey said the school's contact tracing program worked, and their hybrid model of in-person and remote learning reduced the number of people who were exposed to the infected student.
"I was pleased that our contact-tracing protocols we put in place helped us pretty quickly ID and narrow down close contacts," Runey said, "Thirty is still a lot, but if we didn't have greater degree of certainty with seating charts and things like that, we would have had to err on the side of caution for a lot more kids."
Officials said that five other students tested positive for COVID-19 but did not show up for classes.
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