30 students, 3 teachers in South Florida return to school after coronavirus scare
Thirty high school students and three teachers from a Palm Beach County school were given the “all clear” to return to campus after a potential coronavirus scare that started with a visit to Yale University over the weekend.
School officials say the group has not shown any signs of sickness following the four-day conference in Connecticut.
“Based on the most up to date information, including an overnight article in the New England Journal of Medicine, CDC guidelines, and consultations with local and state health officials as well as the lack of signs of illness amongst our returning students over the last 5 days since the potential exposure, we feel confident in allowing all to safely return to normal daily activities,” Thomas J. Reid, Benjamin School’s interim head of school, wrote in an email sent to the campus community on Thursday.
The students and teachers from Benjamin’s School’s high school campus, 4875 Grandiflora Rd. in Palm Beach Gardens, were potentially exposed to the virus while attending Yale’s annual Model United Nations conference. The conference, which attracts hundreds of students from around the world, began last Thursday and was scheduled to end Sunday.
But by Saturday, Yale administrators were notified that a high school student from China fell ill with a fever and was coughing.
The Chinese student tested positive for the flu at the hospital, and while the test results “suggests that the student has influenza” rather than the coronavirus, the CDC asked that the student be tested for the respiratory virus “as a precaution,” Yale said in a statement. The university also canceled the last day of the conference.
Benjamin School officials told WPTV that 1,800 delegates from over 40 countries were notified by Yale about the student who fell ill. Officials have not disclosed what area in China the student is from.
As “an abundance of caution,” the students and teachers were asked to stay home while the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention awaited the test results of the sick student of China, Juan Carlos Fanjul, the school’s chief development officer, said in a phone interview with the Miami Herald. Now, the school is excited to have them return to campus.
The respiratory virus was first reported in Wuhan, China, and has reportedly killed at least 170 people, with more than 7,000 others infected in more than a dozen countries. It can take 2 to 14 days after exposure to the virus for symptoms to begin occurring, according to the CDC.
So far, there are six confirmed cases of the coronavirus in the United States with 92 pending cases, the center said Thursday afternoon. None of the confirmed cases are in Florida.
To learn more about the virus, visit https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/index.html
An earlier version of this story incorrectly implied that the 30 students and three teachers from Benjamin School were tested. As a precaution, the students were kept home.
This story was originally published January 30, 2020 at 9:50 AM with the headline "30 students, 3 teachers in South Florida return to school after coronavirus scare."
