AUBURN — A pupil at Washburn Elementary School has tested positive for the coronavirus that causes COVID-19.

The student last attended school Oct. 1, Superintendent Connie Brown said Thursday.

She said almost two weeks had elapsed between the pupil’s most recent day on campus and when the district was notified Oct. 13.

“Because of the time that has elapsed, the guidance we were given (from the Maine Center for Disease Control) was that close contacts were not school contacts,” Brown said.

Therefore, no other students and no staff are in quarantine, she said. Under state guidelines, those in close contact must be quarantined for 14 days.

Close contact is defined as being within 6 feet of an infected person for 15 minutes or longer.

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Brown said the sick pupil does not ride a school bus. She declined to say which days the student attends classes in person under Auburn’s hybrid model of in-person and remote instruction.

“The cohort is so small that we think by giving that level of information we would wander pretty closely to student privacy issues,” Brown said. “We are being very judicious about student and family privacy.”

This is the fourth case of the airborne virus in Auburn schools. A staff member and a student at Auburn Middle School and a student at Park Avenue Elementary School have tested positive since the beginning of the school year Sept. 14.

A case also has been reported at Geiger Elementary School in Lewiston.

According to the Maine Department of education, schools statewide have seen a total of 112 cases of COVID-19. Eighty-one have been confirmed and 31 are listed as probably positive, according to a spreadsheet of cases released Tuesday.

Regional Community Charter Schools in Skowhegan and Cornville had reported 15 cases. Sanford High School had 13. All other schools had each seen fewer than five.


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