While it began bumpy, the ride is seemingly smoothing out for the Monongalia County Schools transportation employee whose initial positive test for COVID-19 sparked fears he may have also exposed his co-workers to the coronavirus.
Schools Superintendent Eddie Campbell Jr. said the employee, who lives in a neighboring county, first tested positive via a saliva test administered by his local health department.
But there was a turnaround.
The worker, the superintendent said, had a negative reading to a nasal swab test on Thursday, and will undergo one more round today — to see if there are back-to-back negatives, which usually indicate a clean bill.
“I can’t tell you how relieved we are,” Campbell said.
“There’s still that level of anxiety,” he said, “but we were ready to do what we needed to do.”
People weren’t so sure about that at first on social media when word started getting out, however.
The employee had taken part in a week-long training session for back to school, which wrapped up last Friday. He was joined by more than 100 of his colleagues for the sessions, with face masks and social distancing as mandatory requirements.
That Saturday, he went to a family function back home, where he feared that he may have been exposed to COVID-19.
So he got tested, as per procedure of his employer.
Once word began to trickle out, the Monongalia County chapter of the American Federation of Teachers wondered why there wasn’t a mass quarantine of everyone in the training sessions, which is also standard procedure.
AFT asked as much in a Facebook post, even, wondering why such an event would be deemed “low risk” by health and school officials here.
“That’s because there was no way he could have contracted the coronavirus at our sessions,” Campbell said.
“He was worried about what might have happened at his gathering,” the superintendent continued, “and that was the day after we were done.”
As said, the employee’s training sessions finished up last Friday, and that Saturday, he went back home for the family function.
Out of caution, Campbell said, his fellow workers who attended those sessions with him were instructed to self-monitor and to get a COVID test if they felt they needed one.
The self-monitoring they do anyway, the superintendent said.
Every morning, every employee, including him, takes his temperature and answers an electronic questionnaire based on health and well-being.
Mon students will do the same when they start reporting to school, come Sept. 8.
How you answer, he said, depends on whether you go to work or class that day.
“It’s really a good, effective monitoring system and it’s about the safety of everyone in the district,” Campbell said.
Monitoring after the employee’s circumstance became known was muddled, AFT charged, and so was the message.
Get to the (pandemic) point
The union, it said in its Facebook post that went out late Tuesday, recounted its query to Campbell and the district concerning the response.
“The representative from the Central Office said that they were working with the local health department for the tracking, tracing and could not comment further,” the message read.
“They refused our request to notify employees [and AFT members] who were at this training about the possible exposure,” it continued.
“Additionally, they also refused our request to advise these same employees to go home, quarantine and await the investigation outcome.”
Neil Heard, an AFT representative for Monongalia County, said he was updated by the school district Thursday.
With the start of school in Mon and across West Virginia two weeks out, he said, that means COVID uncertainty is going to become even more so.
School districts, Heard said, need to convey clear, concise information to students, employees and families.
“We dodged a scary situation that maybe shouldn’t have even occurred,” he said.
