More Bucks Co. Kids Getting COVID, But Cases Not Traced To School

BUCKS COUNTY, PA — During a record week for new coronavirus cases in Bucks County, 232 school-age children and 31 school staff members tested positive for the virus last week.

It was a dramatic increase that came with what may be a surprising detail from county health officials — most of those students were still spending at least some of their school days at home and almost none of them are believed to have gotten sick at school.

The number of students in Bucks County who tested positive last week more than doubled from the week before, when 112 students and just six staff members had received positive results. That came as COVID-19 numbers surged to record levels in Bucks, with 3,227 new infections, the most ever, and 38 new deaths, the most since late May.

The fall surge of COVID-19 forced the Bucks County Health Department, which had been one of the few in Pennsylvania to maintain a robust contact tracing program throughout the pandemic, to abandon those overall efforts. Now, the department has fine-tuned its tracing work, focusing on populations of interest, including the elderly, nursing home residents and students and school employees.

That tracing has shown that a majority of school-age children who get sick with the virus in Bucks County are not attending full-time, in-person classes. Last week, just 18 percent of the students who tested positive were doing so, according to the county.

Dr. David Damsker, director of the county health department, said that, every week, about 40 percent of the staff and students who test positive for COVID are at schools that are teaching classes completely remotely.

"We should stop blaming schools as being part of the problem," Damsker said. "The surge was not caused by the schools, nor will closing schools stop the surge."

In Bucks County, school districts that have returned to full-time, in-person classes include Quakertown, Pennridge, Palisades, Central Bucks and Neshaminy. Many, like New Hope, Council Rock, Bensalem, Bristol Township and Pennsbury, are operating on a hybrid model, with some remote learning and some in-person schooling.

Only a few are still fully remote, and those have plans to start returning students to class next month.

Other health experts have been less bullish on in-person schooling as coronavirus case numbers mount. The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia PolicyLab recommended that schools in areas with rocketing positivity rates return to remote learning before and after the Thanksgiving holiday.

Pennsylvania Health Secretary Dr. Rachel Levine has said experts are keeping a close eye on COVID-19 numbers among school children, but that there were no plans for an across-the-board, statewide school closure. She and Gov. Tom Wolf announced this week, though, that new mitigation efforts are being considered in Pennsylvania as coronavirus cases and deaths continue to rise.

Damsker is quick to note that there is nothing magical about school-age kids that makes them impervious to the virus when in the classroom. Instead, he said, schools are largely controlled environments where the basics that health officials have been preaching — mask wearing, hand washing and social distancing — are being enforced better than in the public at large.

"Absolutely, we know that schools are a safe and controlled environment where kids are required to follow masking and social distancing rules," he said. "We are not seeing evidence of spread in the schools, and the exposure links are almost always clearly from out-of-school and/or household exposures."

Damsker said there have been "a couple" of cases involving students where transmission links were unclear or multiple ways of getting sick were possible. But if any spread of the coronavirus is happening at schools, "it's very rare, given how many cases we are seeing in the community," Damsker said.

Throughout the county, school officials have found themselves in the unenviable position of making decisions about in-person instruction as COVID-19 numbers have been surging.

Aside from health and safety concerns, some have struggled with the basics of operating as large numbers of teachers and other staff have either gotten sick or had to quarantine due to exposures to the virus.

Last week, the Council Rock school board voted to delay the start of full-time, in-person school for elementary students, which had been scheduled to start next week.

"Obviously there are health and safety concerns, but my driving motivation here is operational," Superintendent Robert Fraser said at the time. "I am not confident right now that we would be able to effectively staff a K-6 five-day a week opening in 10 days."

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, children are less likely than adults to suffer severe symptoms from COVID-19, but can play a role in transmitting the virus to others.

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This article originally appeared on the Bensalem Patch