2 Wellesley Schools Dismissed Early After Parent Diagnosed With Coronavirus
WELLESLEY (CBS) - A person has tested positive for coronavirus in Wellesley Friday, according to the school department. The case has been connected to a Biogen conference in Boston, that at least five presumptive positive cases have come from.
According to letter sent Friday to parents of students at both the Upham and Wellesley middle schools, the infected person is a parent who has children in those schools and at Elmwood Christian Preschool.
"It's important to know that these children are showing no symptoms and are healthy," the email said. "Out of an abundance of caution, we have made the proactive decision to release students early at Upham and WMS in order to fully clean and sanitize both buildings."
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Wellesley Health Director Leonard Izzo elaborated, "We're working with our facility maintenance departments so all hard surfaces, desks, tables and all that, are in the process of being cleaned and sanitized...They're washing first and then they are sanitizing after."
All other Wellesley public schools finished the day on regular schedules.
Elmwood Christian Preschool will be closed on Monday, March 9 for a thorough cleaning.
"There are so many people in the school, and we don't know who it is and it could just be one of my friends that I'm talking to right now and it's just really scary," seventh-grader Nicole Tavis said. "A bunch of my teachers just got a bunch of hand sanitizers and one of my teachers was like 'you can't enter my classroom without putting on hand sanitizer.'"
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"People are fear-mongering and it's scaring people and kids and it's completely unnecessary," said parent Tammy Thomas.
The coronavirus patient remains at home where the rest of the family is in self-quarantine.
"That seems pretty smart to me that they took everyone out, because if it's someone in the school that could be bad," said middle school student Declan Ahern.
According to the latest numbers from the Massachusetts Department of Health on Friday, there are now seven presumptive cases of coronavirus in the state and just one confirmed case, a UMass Boston student who traveled to Wuhan, China. That one case was confirmed by the Centers for Disease Control.
