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Oak Ridge High School staff member tests positive for COVID-19

Borchers said having this report Saturday morning allowed the district to implement a 24-hour closure so it could thoroughly disinfect the building on Saturday.

OAK RIDGE, Tenn. — Oak Ridge Schools Superintendent Dr. Bruce Borchers sent a message out to families and staff on Sunday to let them know that a staff member at Oak Ridge High School tested positive for COVID-19.

Borchers said the district learned on Saturday, August 1, that a staff member who had last been in the building at Oak Ridge High School on Friday, July 31, has tested positive for COVID-19.

In the message, Borchers said having this report Saturday morning allowed the district to implement a 24-hour closure so it could thoroughly disinfect the building on Saturday. A second disinfectant fogging of the full building occurred on Sunday.

To mitigate the impact of this development, the district said it has taken the following steps:

1. All staff members (and their families) who were identified as having been in close contact with the staff member have been individually contacted to identify the specific areas of building that they visited.

2. The district is advising staff members who believe they have come into close contact with an individual who has received a positive test for COVID-19 to talk to their building administrators. For COVID-19, a close contact is defined as any individual who was within 6 feet of an infected person for 10 minutes or longer starting from 2 days before onset (or, for asymptomatic patients, 2 days prior to positive specimen collection) until the time the patient is isolated.

3. All areas of the ORHS building identified as having been potentially infected have been stringently cleaned since the time of the potential exposure.

4. The ORS administrative staff has reevaluated these circumstances with the guidance of the school system’s newly formed Communicable Disease Team (CDT) which is composed of leaders from the Oak Ridge Schools and the appropriate County Health Department.

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