MFS is shifting to Virtual MFS beginning tomorrow and for the foreseeable future after on campus testing this morning resulted in  a number of asymptomatic positive cases of COVID-19. All in-person after school activities, such as athletics and the musical, will also be virtual for the time being.

Following the report of positive cases, students and faculty on campus sheltered in place to avoid any further mixing. Head of School Julia de la Torre announced via email that they were issuing an early dismissal and requested that all students be picked up immediately and all faculty sent home. 

“As a student, I was very lost,” said Mikey Paznokas ’21, who was on campus when the positive cases were discovered. “I felt that as soon as I got a grasp of what was happening, I panicked for a minute trying to stay as safe as possible.”

Paznokas was not alone, as even teachers, such as Upper School history teacher Jackie Scully, were left to figure things out as everything happened so suddenly. 

“I was in the auditorium as a study hall proctor with Mr. Newman, and Mr. Rachlin came into the auditorium around 12:30 p.m. to let us know to stay in place until there was more notification,” said Scully. “He did mention some information about testing, and so we assumed there were positive tests, but we did not get any other information.”

Scully and some other teachers had to cancel their last class of the day due to the sudden change in the schedule, while other teachers were able to still have class remotely. 

MFS is currently working with the Riverside Medical Group, the organization administering the school’s on-site COVID testing, to complete contact tracing of the positive cases. According to de la Torre’s email, due to the unexpectedly high case numbers, Riverside has also reached out to Abbott, the manufacturer of the COVID tests, to “understand if there were any irregularities with the batch of tests that were used.” They have also requested that anyone who tested positive to return to campus to complete a PCR test in order to confirm the initial positive test. Once this has been completed, de la Torre said they will “update the community on next steps.”

These positive cases come just as the Upper School began its second week of hybrid learning since coming back from winter break, and it is the third time that hybrid learning has had to be put on hold this school year. While this outbreak on campus has sparked some fear, members of the community that WordsWorth interviewed still trust in MFS to guarantee the safety of every member of the community. 

“I felt very safe,” said Paznokas. “The school put in a lot of work to put up plexiglass and distance the classrooms and I thought they did a great job. Positive COVID cases are inevitable, and MFS did the best they could to avoid it.” 

Scully said she shares a similar viewpoint to Paznokas, believing that MFS has done a good job ensuring safe in-person learning. 

“I felt pretty safe being on campus and could see how much protocol we have in place,” said Scully. “I really have never felt unsafe on campus, but then learning about potential positive cases, and not knowing the amount, I did start to feel unsafe. I trust that our school is doing everything they can to keep us all safe, and my hope is we will find out more and be able to go back to campus. I think at this time there is just so much we don’t know about so we have to wait. I think at least being virtual for Wednesday, January 20, is the right decision. Luckily we have learned to pivot very quickly at MFS!” 

Update 1/21: 

Head of School Julia de la Torre has confirmed that all positive COVID-19 tests that were conducted on Tuesday were false positives. The  PCR tests that were conducted afterwards have produced negative results for COVID-19, confirming the false positives.

MFS will be moving back to their hybrid model starting tomorrow, January 22. Group 1 will be on campus and Upper School athletics will resume. 

In a video message to the community, de la Torre explained that the Abbott ID NOW COVID-19 tests accurately identifies positive cases 95% of the time and called what occurred on Tuesday as an “anomaly” and is “highly unlikely to happen again.” Abbott has removed all of the machines that were used on Tuesday and will look into what went wrong. 

The MFS Coronavirus Response Team (CRT) will continue to conduct weekly on-campus COVID-19 testing with new testing machines from Abbott that have been thoroughly checked, and a different “lot number” of swabs from Riverside. These new testing machines will be used on employees only tomorrow to ensure that they work properly before they are used on students on Monday, January 25.

This story is still developing and WordsWorth will update the story as more information is released.