The Putney School reported 70 Covid-19 cases among students and staff after it reopened in September, according to the Vermont Department of Health.
The outbreak at The Putney School, a private boarding school in Windham County with about 230 students, is one of 14 that have occurred in K-12 education since the start of the school year, according to the department. About 170 of the Putney students board on campus.
Schools have reported more than 300 Covid cases to the department so far in the academic year. But John Davy, an epidemiologist for the department, said that it was “likely an underestimation” of the true burden of Covid in schools since the total would not include people who were not tested or did not report their positive test to the school.
The state no longer provides schools with a general supply of Covid tests, and removed the authorization for nurses to administer and interpret tests without a doctor’s orders.
But in the case of The Putney School, the department was able to provide the school with additional tests from “an existing, but limited, Department supply of tests,” Davy said via email.
Felicity Ladd, health services coordinator for the school, said via email students had presented with mild cold- and flu-like symptoms. She said as of Monday that the number of cases had “declined rapidly.”
The school isolated some students at its Field House athletic facility, according to spokesperson Darry Madden. Madden declined to provide an exact breakdown of the number of infected students and staff, but the health department confirmed that 70 cases were tied to the school.
The health department has been in regular communication with The Putney School as it handles the outbreak, according to Davy.
“(I)t is particularly challenging for schools with a boarding component to prevent transmission of COVID-19 and other respiratory disease, particularly in settings where many cases will be only mildly symptomatic or even asymptomatic,” he wrote.
He added that schools must balance Covid mitigation practices with “other crucial priorities.”
The extent to which schools in Vermont contribute to Covid transmission in communities has long been a topic of debate among state officials and Covid experts.
During the height of the pandemic, as schools opened to in-person instruction with Covid protocols in place, state officials said they believed that school cases were typically a reflection of community transmission, rather than causing further spread.
But data from March 2021 suggested that winter sports contributed to Covid transmission that led to multiple school outbreaks, according to a report from the health department.
The health department noted that the 14 outbreaks reported so far this year did not encompass every Covid case in Vermont schools, only instances where there was evidence of in-school transmission. Katie Warchut, a spokesperson for the department, said the data could not clearly answer exactly how many cases were linked to in-school transmission.
It’s also hard to say how the 14 outbreaks and 300-plus Covid cases in schools compare with Vermont as a whole. The department has reported 574 Covid cases statewide over the past three weeks, but case data is limited because of the widespread availability of antigen tests that are not reported to the state.
The latest surveillance update from the department, published on Wednesday, reported 22 hospital admissions for Covid in the past week — roughly in line with the total for the past four weeks, but elevated compared with June and July. The department said that hospitalization levels were “low.”
National hospital admissions for Covid have ticked up 18% in the past two weeks, according to The New York Times. The federal government authorized a new Covid booster earlier this month that is tailored toward more recent strains of the disease.
