A week ago there was just one known case of Covid-19 among East Hampton High School students, but that number had risen to six by Monday and all of them are connected to a single recent indoor gathering, school officials said this week.
The cases caused East Hampton School District officials to restrict classes to virtual learning through tomorrow. In emails to families, Adam Fine, Richard Burns, and James Crenshaw, respectively the assistant superintendent, superintendent, and high school principal, said there is one "silver lining in this terrible news" -- that none of the cases "originated in school."
As of press time Wednesday there were 10 total cases of Covid-19 among East Hampton students -- including four in students in the lower grades at the John M. Marshall Elementary School. But on Thursday morning, the district announced fifth case, in a fifth-grader at John Marshall. Students and teachers in that student's class were told to quarantine on Thursday. Children who were in close contact with the Covid-positive student will be notified by a nurse, the district said in an email to parents, adding that "a deep cleaning of related classrooms is currently underway."
Aside from the John Marshall fifth-graders it is not known how many students and staff members, if any, are now under mandatory quarantine.
For East Hampton High School and Middle School, the district had been planning to add Wednesdays for in-person lessons later this month so that students would attend school three days per week on alternating weeks and remain in distance learning the other two days in their respective groupings. It is unclear at this point whether school officials will proceed with that plan. Mr. Burns said by email on Monday that "no decision has been made about Wednesday yet."
The administrators said in their email that they hope "to safely implement additional days of in-person instruction for all of our students. However, our hands will be tied and this will never become a reality if the community spread continues due to a neglect of practicing safe guidelines. Please partner with us and make the right decisions for your children to keep them safe."
East Hampton school officials canceled off-season sports workouts this week because of the positive cases.
"For everyone to stay in school, it might require rethinking going to a social event, leaving the state or country, or taking the necessary precautions if you are in a situation that requires travel," the high school principal, Mr. Crenshaw, said in an email to families on Saturday.
Mr. Burns would not elaborate on the social gathering where the students appeared to have contracted the virus. An investigation by the County Health Department was initiated. Students who were at the gathering or otherwise potentially exposed to the virus will need to quarantine and were to be contacted by the school nurses.
Also within the last week, the Bridgehampton School had a second case, this one in an employee. Michael Miller, the school principal, made the announcement Friday afternoon but did not say how many people had to quarantine. The school's first case was diagnosed in a student five days earlier, resulting in the quarantine of 10 adults and 10 students.
Several districts have had laboratory-reported Covid cases among children who did not actually attend those schools. In East Hampton, in addition to the 10 positive cases, there have been five lab-reported community cases among children.
Pierson Middle and High School in Sag Harbor has had one case, Springs School has had one case, the Montauk School two, and the Southampton School District four, according to a state database that can be found online at schoolcovidreportcard.health.ny.gov.
The East Hampton School District's total number of Covid cases continued to rise this week as diagnoses on the East End rose as well. As of press time yesterday, there were 16 new cases in East Hampton Town and 27 in Southampton Town over the previous day, bringing the municipalities' totals to 309 and 1,392, respectively. Cases are assigned to a town based on the primary residence reported by the patient, which means many East End cases may have been listed under New York City addresses.
Long Island's daily infection rate, meaning the number of positive tests as compared to the total number of test results received, was 1.8 percent on Monday and 1.4 percent over the weekend. Suffolk County had 176 new cases reported on Tuesday. Elsewhere in New York State, regions including Brooklyn, Queens, and Rockland are seeing more dramatic increases in Covid numbers.
More than half a million New Yorkers have tested positive since the start of the pandemic and nearly 26,000 have died.