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School administrators are investigating whether a teacher instructed a fifth-grader who died of complications from coronavirus last week to accompany sick students to the nurse.
Anthonette Ward, spokesperson for Suffolk Public Schools, said the student’s school has a rule on how to deal with children with symptoms of COVID-19, and only adults are supposed to accompany them.
It is not known how and where Teresa Sperry was exposed to the virus. The Suffolk School Division worked with the Virginia Department of Health to research contracts.
Contact tracers are public health workers who work as disease detectives. Their role is to interview people who have recently tested positive for a disease and determine who they have recently come into contact with. Then, they provide advice to those people on how to avoid passing the virus on to others.
As of Monday, only about 31% of confirmed cases of COVID-19 were questioned in the past week, according to the health department.
The health department contacted the family on Wednesday, after Teresa’s death, regarding the positive results of her test.
Teresa, a 10-year-old girl who attended Hillpoint Elementary School, died last Monday at the King’s Daughters Children’s Hospital. Her symptoms started with a headache but quickly escalated; Five days later, she stopped breathing and could not be resuscitated, her parents Nicole and Jeff Sperry said.
On social media and in new interviews, the Sperrys said their daughter told them the week before her death that a teacher had made her responsible for escorting students to the nurse.
“It was his class job,” his father told the Virginian-Pilot on Wednesday.
Her mother added, “And she said if the kids were sick and had to go home, she had to go get their bag of books and bring it back.”
The school division learned of the parents’ comments last week and is looking into the matter, Ward said.
“The protocol at Hillpoint Elementary School is for the teacher or any adult to contact the main office with a ‘C’ code. When this happens, one of the administrators or the school nurse will come to the classroom to pick up the student, ”she said in an email. “We are still investigating to make sure this process was followed faithfully.”
Both parents said they were vaccinated, although Jeff Sperry has a groundbreaking case of COVID-19 as a result of his daughter’s illness.
Teresa was one of two children the Department of Health reported to have died from COVID-19 last week. The other, under 10, also lived in East Virginia, although authorities are not disclosing the child’s identity for reasons of confidentiality.
Thirteen children have died from COVID-19 statewide, the agency said.
The most contagious delta variant resulted in rapid transmission of the virus in August and September. Children represent a growing share of new cases, in part because vaccines are not yet licensed for those under 12. But health officials have said the Pfizer vaccine will soon be extended to 5-11 year olds.
More children were admitted with COVID-19 in September at CHKD, Virginia’s only stand-alone pediatric hospital, than any other month. The second highest volume of staff coronavirus patients was in August.
Elisha Sauers, 757-839-4754, [email protected]
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