Two weeks into the school year, Regional School Unit 1 reported its first COVID-19 of the academic year.
According to a statement issued by Superintendent Patrick Manuel yesterday, “a member of the Bath Regional Career and Technical Center community” tested positive for COVID-19. Manuel did not say if that person is a student or staff member, but wrote the person was “in school during the period of infection/transmission.”
Manuel said only two individuals need to quarantine because of the positive case.
“All those considered a close contact to the positive case have been individually notified and, if necessary, excluded from school,” Manuel wrote Wednesday.
Bath Regional Career and Technical Center is a vocational education center open to all students attending Boothbay Region High School, Lincoln Academy, Morse High School, and Wiscasset High School. According to Manuel, 280 students are enrolled in the vocational center.
The vocational school shares a building with Morse High School in Bath, RSU 1’s only high school. RSU 1 covers Bath, Arrowsic, Phippsburg and Woolwich.
According to the Maine Center for Disease Control and Prevention, just over 73% of Bath Regional Career and Technical Center staff are vaccinated while nearly 86% of Morse High School staff are vaccinated.
Manuel said about 72% of Morse High School’s 640 students are fully vaccinated against COVID-19.
About 61% percent of people ages 12-19 in Sagadahoc County were fully vaccinated as of Thursday, according to state data and just shy of 67% of the total population was fully vaccinated as of Thursday. Statewide, roughly 63% of the total population was fully vaccinated as of Thursday.
Late last month the RSU 1 school board ruled district staff and students must wear face masks while indoors to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. The board also approved pooled testing, a method of regularly testing multiple people for COVID-19.
RSU 1 reported 31 COVID-19 cases in the last academic year, according to the district’s website. Of those, 17 came from within the Morse High School and Bath Regional Career and Technical Center building.
Since the COVID-19 pandemic reached Maine in March 2020, 1,638 Sagadahoc County residents have tested positive for COVID-19 and 12 have died as of Thursday, according to the Maine CDC.
Statewide, 82,607 Mainers have tested positive and 979 have died as of Thursday. Of those, 19.9% — 16,429 cases — were from people under 20 years old.
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