Connecticut coronavirus update: Dozens of COVID cases at CT schools after 1st week back

Connecticut coronavirus update

ByEyewitness News WABC logo

Wednesday, September 8, 2021

Dozens of COVID cases at CT schools after 1st week back

Marcus Solis has more on the COVID cases reported after the first week of school in Connecticut.

NEW FAIRFIELD, Connecticut (WABC) -- Schools in Connecticut have already been back for a week and it's not off to a great start as dozens of COVID cases have been reported among students and teachers from Danbury to New Fairfield.

There have been at least 60 positive cases in the stretch of western Connecticut and as a result, dozens more students are under quarantine because of close contact.

In Danbury, there are six positive cases and over 50 students quarantining.

At a school in neighboring New Fairfield, 40 students at the Meetinghouse Hill School are quarantining after two students and one staff member tested positive. Overall, nearly 3% of the district's students are affected.

The cases in New Fairfield have been linked to a youth football game and not transmission in the school itself.

Most of the students impacted are 3rd to 5th-graders who aren't eligible to be vaccinated and the school superintendent called it a big bump in the road.

There is no remote schooling this year, but the district has set up quarantine school or queue school where students do get limited online instruction from nine to noon.

"If we find that our students are being quarantined more than once, and it's a lot of days out of school, we're going to have to develop another plan," New Fairfield Schools Supt. Patricia Consentino said. "Because you know, our quarantine school is really a small temporary strategy."

So they will continue to monitor the numbers.

Meanwhile, Connecticut state does have a mask mandate for anyone through 12th grade in a school building. That runs through at least Sept. 27, at which time, the governor may extend it.

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