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Bridgewater Middle School Students Were Supposed to Quarantine, But They Were Sent to School Instead. Here's Why.

Photo: Kelly Sikkema
Photo: Kelly Sikkema

About 20 students were supposed to quarantine at Bridgewater Middle School in Winter Garden on Monday.

The department forgot to send an email with the names of the 20 students who were supposed to quarantine to the school's principal on Saturday. 

Health Director Raul Pino says staff realized their mistake Monday morning when they called parents to follow up on their students' health. 

Pino says the affected students who were already at school were immediately separated from their teachers and classmates. 

“Our apologies to the parents that started the day, had to get this news, and pick up the children. But the system worked. So we were able to detect this. And we will do our best for this not to happen again. Our apologies.”

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Pino says it’s unclear how many people might have come in contact with the students or for how long the students were at school before they were sent home.

He says the number of students who become positive during the quarantine period is very low. 

“But I can tell you this thing about quarantine. We also have analyzed all the students that we have sent into quarantine. All that data was recently analyzed last week. And we have seen that our conversion rate is very low. The number of people that convert from negative to positive while they're on quarantine is very, very low.”

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Pino said the positivity rate for the county as a whole including the schools has increased to 6.2 percent. 
If you'd like to listen to this story, click on the clips above.

Danielle Prieur is WMFE's education reporter.