The Tribune

By LEANDRA ROLLE

Tribune Staff Reporter

lrolle@tribunemedia.net 

TWO high school students at Windsor School in Albany have tested positive for COVID-19, officials confirmed to The Tribune yesterday.

Lisa Sawyer-McCartney, Windsor’s director, confirmed the students tested positive for the virus last week.

The situation, she said, has prompted officials to activate the private school’s COVID-19 response plan, allowing for deep cleaning and sanitisation of the areas of contact by the positive cases.

“We have a booklet which outlines what happens in the event somebody presents with a case on the part of our COVID readiness and all that,” she said. “What we did is we had to deep clean the classrooms of course that the child/children were present in and yes, notified the community and notified the Ministry of Health and made sure that the children aren’t (at) school.”

It is not clear how the students contracted the virus. However, Mrs Sawyer-McCartney said as far as she was aware, none of the other staff members have tested positive for COVID-19 to date.

“We’ve had teachers tested,” she said. “That’s part of our protocol and I haven’t been advised that there’s a challenge with any of our staff. We’ve undertaken that if we do have situations like this, a part of our protocol says we allow the teachers who are in contact to be tested.”

Despite this, she said operations at the school are still resuming as normal, with strict protocols in place.

She said: “We sent a letter from school saying that a child, actually two children that tested positive for COVID. So, we did send it out to the community. We always let parents know so that they can make an informed decision as to whether they want to be online or whether they want to do face-to-face.

“We’re still running a hybrid programme because understandably, there aren’t parents who aren’t comfortable coming to school and so parents have a choice.”

Still, Mrs Sawyer- McCartney said officials are committed to doing all they can to minimise COVID exposure where possible. She added that they are constantly in contact with the Ministry of Education and the Ministry of Health on the matter.

“We have very strict protocols in place with the plexiglass separators for our kids, hand washing stations and hand sanitising stations. The kids are wearing masks… parents know what we’re doing to prevent spread,” she said.

“Fortunately, we have quite a bit of space on all of our campuses, so we were able to keep kids pretty separate and we feel comfortable and, like I said, we’re speaking with the Ministry of Education and Ministry of Health.

“We also have some private doctors that we are consulting with or (who are) just longtime associates of the school who we lean on for advice and recommendations on the situation.”

In March, the government mandated the closure of schools after the country recorded its first COVID-19 case, resulting in many local institutions shifting to online classes to allow students to continue their studies at home for the remainder of the school year.

While public schools in the country are not set to reopen for the new school semester until October 5, many private institutions have since re-opened, using both virtual learning and face-to-face methods.