Potential COVID-19 Contagion at Memorial Junior High Diffused
By: Miguel Munoz, Eagle Pass Business Journal, Inc., Copyright 2020
A breach of the Eagle Pass and Maverick County Emergency Operations Center and Local Health Authority COVID-19 Quarantine protocols by a parent of a student at Memorial Junior High that could have led to a potential COVID-19 contagion at the school was diffused by the Eagle Pass Independent School District on Thursday, September 3, 2020.
At a hastily called press conference by EPISD Superintendent Samuel Mijares on September 3, 2020, Mijares stated he wished to inform the public that a “situation” had occurred at Memorial Junior High wherein a student who had a family member test positive for COVID-19 had been sent to attend school on Wednesday, September 2, 2020 by his parents instead of keeping the student quarantined at home. COVID-19 quarantine protocol requires any person having contact with a confirmed positive COVID-19 individual to be tested for the Coronavirus and remain in quarantine until their test results return or until the family member is released from their quarantine. In this “situation” the parent sent their child without COVID-19 to school instead of keeping them quarantined, causing a potential COVID-19 contagion at school had that student turned out to have been positive too. Fortunately, the Memorial Junior High student in question is negative for COVID-19 and last attended school on Wednesday, September 2, 2020.
Superintendent Mijares also stated that a news media from Piedras Negras, Coahuila, Mexico had incorrectly reported on their Facebook or website that there had been two students in the EPISD test positive for COVID-19. Mijares stated that as of September 3, no EPISD students had tested positive for COVID-19 at any school.
The Memorial Junior High “situation” caused great consternation among parents of students. Students were removed from their classrooms and placed in the school cafeteria while school district officials handled the “situation.”
The Memorial Junior High incident on September 3 clearly demonstrated the dangers of potentially causing a COVID-19 contagion among students, teachers, administrators, and staff members and how easily it is to cause a potential contagion when a person does not follow the COVID-19 quarantine protocols established by local authorities.
The “situation” also exposed the EPISD lack of contact tracing of its students or personnel. The EPISD will more than likely be required to maintain its own contact tracers in addition to the ones already available at the local Emergency Operations Center to avoid future similar incidents and a potential COVID-19 outbreak at one or more of its schools.
As a result of the scare from this Memorial Junior High “situation,” the EPISD has changed its previous policy to require students to change classrooms after each class and has now implemented a new policy to maintain students in the same classroom for all of their classes during the day.
The EPISD Board of Trustees earlier in August 2020 approved to allow parents a choice to elect to send their children for in-person instruction or receive online remote instruction upon the recommendation of Superintendent Mijares.
