Pasadena Unified started testing students on Aug. 1 through this Wednesday and 47 tests from staff and students have already come back positive. The positive tests mean students and staff were forced to quarantine just as the new school year began.
“The virus is going to find people who are unvaccinated. Children have very low vaccination rates,” said Dr. Amesh Adalja.
Adalja is a senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security. He said the outbreaks at schools do not surprise him.
“People are going to interact in the community, and the school may be where their case is diagnosed,” he said.
However, communication between the school, the district and the public remains opaque.
According to the school district’s COVID-19 dashboard, 15 staff and students from John Muir Early College Magnet have been forced to quarantine since Aug. 1. Blair School has the second-highest number with nine.
Marshall Fundamental Secondary School, however, shows only “pending update,” despite an email from the school about positive COVID-19 cases.
Parents from Marshall received an email Wednesday night from principal Lori Touloumian confirming there were two cases of COVID-19 at the school, according to Pasadena Star News. The school did not clarify whether it was staff or students who tested positive.
“In an effort to prevent the spread of the virus, we’re implementing additional infection control,” and immediately quarantining all unvaccinated seventh graders, starting Thursday, read the letter.
According to the email, the two cases are “epidemiologically linked.”
“This means that the infected persons share a common membership at school (e.g., classroom, school event, school extracurricular activity, academic class, sports teams, clubs, transportation). The two confirmed cases have been present at some point in the same setting during the same time period while infectious within a 14-day period.”
Longfellow Elementary also shows “pending update.”