Riding the USN 'COVID coaster'

The Health Team shares best practices to avoid contracting and spreading the novel coronavirus. And if your family needs advice, USN's medical doctors and nurses are just a few clicks or a phone call away.
By Margee Brennan, M.D., Health Team Director

When I last wrote about our day to day operations, USN had navigated returning to in-person classes, survived Fall Break, and we were looking at how to return safely after Thanksgiving and Winter Breaks. We learned as a community what it means to quarantine a classroom, or a sports team, or a travel group, or more. We rode the wave as numbers started to soar in the greater metro area. Our numbers ebbed and flowed.

Fast forward to Friday, January 29. It is the end of our fourth week of the new semester, and we have tallied more than half of our fall cases and two-thirds of the quarantine numbers. We have identified what looks like our first few cases of in-school transmission in Middle School and have nearly a quarter of our High School in quarantine. Broader strokes were made in response by the Middle School division sending two grades remote for a time and the High School benching Grades 9-12 as well. In the words of Director Vince Durnan, it feels like we are “riding the COVID coaster.”

We have been examining our data and trying to figure out what we can learn to help us going forward. Operating school during a pandemic is, after all, still new territory to us. We are seeing more and more how one event — be it a play date, a small family gathering, or plane travel — can affect so many others in our community.

Beyond the already well-known masking, distancing, and hand-washing there are some extra precautions we can all take.
  1. For one, consider symptoms, even mild, a reason to test. The drive-thru Davidson Co. COVID-19 Assessment Centers are open during the week and are returning results often within 24 hours. Stay home and keep your children home if someone in the household is sick until test results are back. 
  2. If your student participates in travel sports, consider the risk level of the event. Did they fly on a plane? See lots of unmasked people? Eat out in restaurants? Strongly consider self-quarantine upon their return. The same is true if a family needs to travel for other reasons or you have guests coming to you. We would be happy to talk with anyone about a safer return to school after anything that stretches your protective bubble.
  3. Our aim on the Health Team is to be more proactive than ever before. Email us (covid-alert@usn.org), call us (615-277-7380 on weekdays between 7:30 a.m. and 4:30 p.m.), ask us, inform us. When in doubt, keep your student(s) home until you check with us. Consider that an ounce of prevention might translate into stopping, not just the spread of infection but also the need to quarantine a lot of Tigers.
Also, usn.org/HealthTeamFAQ remains a resource for answers to questions we are frequently asked. 
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University School of Nashville models the best educational practices. In an environment that represents the cultural and ethnic composition of Metropolitan Nashville, USN fosters each student’s intellectual, artistic, and athletic potential, valuing and inspiring integrity, creative expression, a love of learning, and the pursuit of excellence.