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A day in the life of a school COVID-19 investigator

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PUEBLO, Colo. (KRDO) — A team of four people in Pueblo School District 70 is responsible for tracking down COVID-19 in the school system.

“This is all kind of brand new to us,” said Todd Seip, the public information officer for District 70. “We didn’t sign up to be COVID response team investigators.”

Three people who work in the Student Services department, along with a school nurse, make up the team. They have each taken on a job that doesn’t wait for them to clock in. And they do it on top of their normal job responsibilities.

“When we get a response investigation that we know we need to tackle, we put those other duties aside and we’ll get back to those later,” Seip said. "This is actually, probably, two full-time positions at the same time."

When a principal, a parent, or the health department notifies the school district about a positive case, the student is placed on a 10-day COVID-19 leave from the start of symptoms. But District 70 says its contract tracing pre-dates any symptoms.

“The investigation begins a timeline that starts 48 hours prior to the onset of symptoms, or in the case of no symptoms, 48 hours before the individual was tested,” Seip said.

Then, anyone who made contact with the person who tested positive during that timeline will be told to quarantine for 14 days. Seip says it seems to be working. Out of 22 schools and 11,000 students, the district reports 15 confirmed positive COVID-19 cases so far.

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Lauren Barnas

Lauren is an anchor and MMJ for KRDO and 13 Investigates. Learn more about Lauren here.

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