School Superintendent Dr. Bruce Borchers sent a message to families of students yesterday stating a staff member at Oak Ridge High School tested positive for COVID-19. Borchers said obtaining this report Saturday allowed the district to implement a 24-hour closure so it could thoroughly disinfect the building. A second disinfectant fogging of the full building took place yesterday.

The school district said it has taken the following steps:

• 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.
• 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.
• All areas of the Oak Ridge High School building identified as having been potentially infected have been stringently cleaned since the time of the potential exposure.
• The Oak Ridge school 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.