St. Stephens School has shared the following announcement:
Saint Stephens School Families and Community,
I have some important information to share with you. One of our meal prep employees has tested positive for COVID-19. The employee helped prepare lunch only last week from Monday, April 6 to Thursday, April 9, 2020.
Important Facts:
The employee did not make any deliveries last week to student homes. The employee did not come into contact with the employees who delivered food and homework to students last week; The employee did not work today, April 14, 2020. Health officials informed SSIS administrators at 10:43 am. Again, the food delivery employees at no time had contact with the meal prep employees; there was no direct contact with the public or our students.
Next Steps:
State health officials are contacting those employees who are at higher risk for COVID-19 due to their close contact with the positive individual. We are currently following up with the other meal prep employees as well. They will be under a mandatory 14-day quarantine. Health officials want everyone to know because proper procedures and protective equipment were being used, the risk of exposure to the community from food delivery is very, very low.
Superintendent No Runner’s Statement:
The goal is (and the State/Business council is on board with this) to try to figure out somehow to get meals out to our students. We are currently in discussion with the Business Council, Wind River Cares, and the State of Wyoming. We understand that not being able to feed the kids will probably have a great impact. The biggest concern is for the continued safe delivery for meals for students. Saint Stephens will be closed for the rest of the week, April 14-17, and will do our best to re-open as soon as possible on Monday, April 20, 2020. We are working on several options including with working with Fremont #38 to get food to the students for the rest of this week starting on Thursday, April 16, 2020. There will be no food delivery tomorrow, April 15, 2020. We will provide an update as soon as possible. The state health officials agree the food we have been delivering is very unlikely to have any risk of coronavirus transmission.
We have hired a fully bonded and insured professional cleaning service that is an outside source to come and start the cleaning process tomorrow morning at 6 am. The staff at Saint Stephens have been cleaning the buildings, work areas, and school vehicles that transport the delivery of food and work these past few weeks. The guidelines recommended today are to keep the building closed for about 24 hours and have the space thoroughly cleaned so the space can be used again. Again our main goal is to make sure that the kids and families are able to access the food.
According to state health officials there is low risk to the public, and there’s never been a described case of COVID-19 transmission through food. We are on target to make sure the building is cleaned and after that there’s no reason not to be able to use the school building.
Below are the links to the CDC guidelines:
https://www.cdc.gov/…/news…/food-safety-and-Coronavirus.html
https://www.cdc.gov/…/organizati…/cleaning-disinfection.html
Lastly, if you as an employee, parent, student, community member has any questions please do not hesitate to contact me directly, I can be reached at 307-851-2104 any time day or night. The Superintendent will be the only person from Saint Stephens to answer questions during this time, so do not hesitate, if you have concerns.
Thank you.